


Burned

by scotchplaid



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:34:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 167,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3865369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scotchplaid/pseuds/scotchplaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>B&W AU loosely based on the TV show White Collar.  Myka is the straight-arrow FBI agent and Helena is the con artist she's partnered with to bring down white-collar criminals and, perhaps, a super villain. . . that is, if Myka can get over the fact that this is the same woman who betrayed her years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted over on FF.net. I'll note here what I noted there -- that I added the twist of them having a history because I stalled out on writing the fic as a straight caper. There's angst, recriminations, regrets, but a reconciliation somewhere down the line.
> 
> I'll also note for the record how none of the characters and the White Collar premise are mine. Additionally there will be strong language and sexual situations. Finally, this fic is in no way meant to be a realistic portrait of anything -- government agencies, the art world, the black market, etc. I just took a suggestion someone had mentioned and started to play with it. . . .

She was sweating. Not glowing, not perspiring. Sweating. Copiously. Sweating hard enough that she knew there were damp patches under her arms, half-moons that would show as a darker blue on her shirt if she took off her suit jacket. She could feel drops of sweat trickling between her breasts and down her belly. That would show too - not as half-moons but as splotches, as though raindrops had spattered her shirt. Except that there was no rain. Sunshine beat on her through the car's windshield. Part of the problem maybe, but not all of it. Flop sweat. She was no actor, this was no play, but it was a performance that they were going to put on all the same. And she knew their audience, their audience of one, and that one had never, ever missed a thing.

"There aren't going to be any surprises, right? I know all that I need to know before we go in there?"

Sam brought her hand - one of the few parts of her body that wasn't sweating - to his mouth and kissed the back of it. "It's going to be fine, Myka. She's the one who reached out."

"No touching, no looks. She'll be searching for anything she can turn to her advantage," Myka reminded him. It hadn't been some sloppy kiss to her knuckles, just a peck really, but she felt as if she needed to wipe her hand. She wanted to carry nothing into that room that spoke to who she was, now, outside the agency credentials and her suit. They were the only things Helena needed to see. Her hand wasn't wet, but she tried discreetly, she hoped, to rub it against her slacks.

Sam didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he didn't care. He was scanning the GPS, looking for the turn they needed to make off the highway. "She's not Hannibal Lecter, you know," he said mildly. "They're not going to wheel her in with her arms strapped to her sides and a mask on her face."

"If she's no threat, why is she in a maximum security prison?" Myka wished she had worn her hair up; the back of her neck was damp, which would make the frizz worse. There was a time when Helena had - "She's a fraud and a forger, and she's a threat to people's pocketbooks, but she's not violent."

Sam's smile was smug, preening. "Let's call it an incentive."

"You said she was the one who had reached out."

Another smile but he didn't answer her. Myka looked out the window at trees just beginning to bud, feeling a surge of anxiety and a reflux of the coffee she had had earlier in the morning.

" _Can I refuse the assignment?"_

_Pete regarded her across the table. After he had been promoted, he rarely conducted conversations with agents at his desk, preferring to sit at the conference table, which was smaller. Less imposing, he had said, a reminder that it could have been any one of them put in charge of the team. Maybe that was true, but it never would have been her. It wasn't just in her personnel file, it followed her on every assignment, colored every discussion about a commendation, she was sure. She had been commended many times, she had done what she could to ensure that. But she would never sit behind the desk in this office, she had also seen to that._

" _It's career suicide, Mykes."_

" _No, the career suicide happened eight years ago when I worked with her."_

_He stretched, cracking his neck. "They want you for this assignment. You know her better than anyone else, and they're confident that what happened then won't happen now. It's nonnegotiable."_

" _Fine, I'll quit."_

_He laughed. "No, you won't. She fucked you over, Myka, but you're still you, the best."_

" _And she's still a scorpion."_

" _Maybe she's changed. She's got a kid now. That changes you in ways you never dreamed of." He twisted his head and looked fondly at the photographs on the shelves behind his desk._

A four-year-old daughter, Myka had read in the file. Which, though it made Helena's incarceration all the more inexplicable - she had been caught in a sting to ensnare the major actors in a securities fraud, not her specialty at all - had lent her reaching out, the offer she had made some credibility. Some. When Pete told her that Helena had a child, she hadn't been able to stop herself from flinching, just a little. She hoped he hadn't seen it, she had tried, very, very hard, to school her reactions over the past several years, eight to be exact. There were limitations; her blushing, her occasional stammering, she had never been able to completely eliminate those. But she was better at disguising what she felt than she had been eight years ago when Helena had only to look at her to know what she was thinking. In the end, there was no better teacher than shame.

But today her reactions were playing truant, and her stomach unapologetically flipped as the prison came into view. Its 1960s-era modular sprawl was surrounded by well-tended grounds, and it might have been taken for an aging office park except for the multiple wire barriers glinting in the spring sunshine. Sam parked the car in the visitors lot and, after displaying their credentials several times and endlessly repeating the purpose of their visit, they were finally ushered - to the metal detectors. Myka reluctantly surrendered her jacket and tried to keep her arms close to her sides, fearing the half-moons had grown into jack-o-lantern grins, until she could pick it up at the end of the conveyor belt. As she shrugged it on, she could smell the 'sporty' scent of her anti-perspirant. In the two hours since they had left the city, she must have sweated away 20 hours of its 24-hour protection.

A guard took them to a windowless room and unlocked the door, instructing Sam to use the intercom to let the guardpost know when they were done. Behind the broad bulk of Sam's back, Myka tugged at her suit jacket and tried to take a deep breath. Showtime. Her drama teacher in high school had actually advised them to imagine their audience in their underwear, or, as he had coyly put it, their "unmentionables," to combat their stage fright. Back then, her imagination had rebelled at complying with advice so hokey; this morning it was stalling because she had seen Helena Wells in and out of her underwear too many times.

The giddy laugh that bubbled at the realization just as quickly died at Sam's booming "Ms. Wells" and his uncharacteristically aggressive advance into the room, as if he were ready to pin Helena against the wall should she try to make a dash for the door. He dropped his briefcase with a thump next to a chair and then pulled the chair out, noisily, clumsily. "I'm Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Martino and, of course, you already know Agent Bering." He pulled out the neighboring chair just as loudly, and it struck Myka as she approached the table that he had been signaling from the moment he had shouted Helena's name that he was claiming possession of this room, this meeting, and, she recognized with a flare of anger, of her as well. And she had lagged behind, too self-conscious about her sweating and her nervousness to understand how submissive she would look following him in, taking the chair he offered, letting him (re)introduce her to a woman who had once known her much too well.

"Myka."

Myka had never known the simple two syllables of her name could hold such a variety of emotions, surprise, pleasure, remorse, curiosity. As she sat down, she tried to take Helena in with a single, sweeping glance. One that was professional, cursory, neutral. She had seen pictures of Helena over the past eight years, but she hadn't seen her face-to-face since just before the disaster in Houston. Helena looked older, of course; she would turn 40 in September. Prison wasn't doing her any favors; the blue workshirt was too big for her - Helena had had to roll up the sleeves - and her hair, which was as black as Myka remembered it, when she would bury her face among its strands and think that the blackness of the universe was here, on Helena's pillow, and she would never see to the end of it, was no longer as lustrous and in need of a trim. But the eyes were the same, given a narrow, almost tilted cast by high, prominent cheekbones, they looked both skeptical and secretive, and the wariness in them now was untouched by how softly Helena had said her name.

"Helena." Myka nodded toward the papers that Sam had taken from his briefcase, which he had lifted from the floor and placed in front of him on the table. "That's the substance of our agreement, the assistance you'll provide us in our investigations,  _our_  assistance, should your work for us be as beneficial as we hope, in reducing your sentence." Even to herself, she sounded cool, unruffled. She was a little surprised that Sam hadn't interrupted her, but he seemed almost uninterested in Helena's response. She expected Helena to start reading the agreement or ask if her attorney had been provided a copy, but instead Helena had turned to the signature page and looked at her and Sam expectantly.

"If you'll give me a pen, I'll sign it." Then, with the smile that always seemed to start at the center of her mouth and spread to the corners, as if she were letting you in on one of her many secrets, she said, "My attorney would be appalled if he knew I was meeting you without him, but I have no ulterior motive." The smile faded and the wariness in her eyes was replaced by anxiety. "Nothing means more to me than being with my daughter. I've seen her here, but it's not the same. This arrangement, it means more to me than you can know, and I won't screw it up." At the end, her gaze shifted slightly to focus solely on Myka.

Myka looked away, and she touched Sam's arm in spite of the injunctions she had issued in the car about their not touching, but it seemed less dangerous than looking into Helena's eyes. Myka inclined her head toward the briefcase; a pen was hanging from a leather loop. Sam closed the lid and clasped his hands on top of the briefcase, the almost drowsy expression he had worn when Helena glanced through the agreement gone. "We haven't talked about a condition that's not in the agreement."

Myka struggled not to show the dismay that coursed through her. Damnit. She had asked Sam, and he had as good as lied to her. Helena had no reservations about showing her displeasure. "I thought that's what agreements were for, to identify the conditions that the parties would meet," she said sharply.

"That's your agreement with the FBI, not with us," he said. He opened the briefcase and took out a manila envelope. "I'm the kind of guy who has to visualize things. Words on paper, they just never seem to bring things home to me. Odd for an attorney, isn't it?" Helena stared at him, her hands gripping the table's edge. "I was a linebacker in college. Pretty good one, but too slow for the pros. They always tell you to follow the ball, and you really do have to do that, especially if you're a half-step or more slower than the guys opposite you. Concentrate on what's important." His eyes flickered briefly over the now-ignored agreement. "You've been out of the game for what, four, four and a half years? Which, by the way, makes that securities con you tried to pull, just really fucking stupid. But I digress, you've been out of the game. I have to trust that the FBI knows what they're talking about, that you can still contribute important information to them. But to my bosses and those higher up, it's like you're getting a free ride, Ms. Wells. You get out on some dreamed-up work-release program that we'd give no one else, you dangle a few fake baubles in front of the agents, and all the while you get to play with your daughter all day, take to her the park, the matinee, whatever."

"It's hardly a 'free ride,' Mr. Martino," Helena said evenly. "When I'm not working for the FBI, my understanding is that I'll be under virtual house arrest. And as for my being out of the 'game,' as you call it, there are very few people who can do what I do; the skills and the expertise don't go out of date. In fact, I know of three forgeries that are at the heart of three different insurance scams that the FBI still hasn't been able to help solve."

Myka couldn't help but start reviewing her team's open case files in her mind, until Helena, with a sardonic smile, said, "Those I'll give you, darling, just as a goodwill gesture."

Sam pulled out an 8 x 10 photograph and spun it around on the table for Helena to view. It was of a man and a woman with a little girl between them walking down a sidewalk. The girl had dark hair and was squeezing something against her chest with one hand, a plush animal, an elephant, and, with her other, holding onto the man's hand. He was looking down at her, and though their coloring wasn't similar, there was a resemblance in their features, the same sharp chins and arched brows. The woman, slightly behind them, was walking with a pregnant woman's forward thrust of her pelvis; the photo had caught her with her mouth open and head turned toward the man, talking to him.

"That's your daughter's father, Ben Winslow, am I right? And his wife? Happy little family, aren't they?" Sam's finger touched on each in turn. "Mr. Winslow is petitioning for custody of . . . Chrissy, is it? I understand that he didn't know he was her father until recently. So I can understand why you're anxious to get out of here. The Winslow money, the Winslow influence - it's going to be hard to combat that. I mean, a felon going up against a senator's son. . . ." Sam issued a soundless whistle and shook his head.

"Her name is Christina." Helena had said it as if it was the only thing about the people in the photo, the seemingly happy, seemingly indissoluble unit they presented that she could claim as her hers. Her expression was bleak as she stared at the photo. When she raised her eyes to Sam, Myka could see the flash of rage and confusion before a coldness settled in them. "What do you want from me," she asked flatly.

"We're coming to that." Sam was taking another photograph from the envelope, but this one he was sliding out face down.

_It was late in the morning or early in the afternoon, Myka didn't know the time, didn't care. They were sliding away from each other toward their respective sides of the bed, Helena laughing as she began crushing pillows under her arm. "I believe we're giving new meaning to the expression 'fucking like bunnies,' Agent Bering." She rolled onto her side, propping herself upon the pillows, hand cradling her head as her eyes traced the long lines of Myka's body. "I could almost believe we'd reproduce like them, if effort made the difference."_

" _Do you want them, kids?" Myka wasn't sure why she was asking except that, at this moment, a couple of mini-Helenas struck her as completely adorable. She would probably want to return them at the end of the day, like you would puppies you played with at a pet store, but right now she could imagine herself fixing them breakfast and telling them they needed to brush their teeth._

" _Mmmm. . . hadn't really thought about it. I'm afraid I'd be one of those parents who'd tend to forget they were there and then, out of guilt, overindulge them." Helena had said it lightly, but her mouth was thinning into an unhappy line. She paused, glancing down at the sheets, and when she lifted her eyes, the seriousness was gone and a smile was bowing a delectably full bottom lip. "You'd have to keep them out of my paints and keep track of their bedtime," she said teasingly. "If you think you're up for the job, why don't you come over here and see if we can create a biological miracle?"_

_Myka was tired and sore and not a little hungry, but she could no more resist that smile than she could anything else about Helena Wells. "We'll name her after you," she said as she sucked in Helena's bottom lip between her own._

". . . some would say he went out in Gentleman Jim style," Sam was saying musingly, and as Myka tried to retrieve her thoughts from the bed she had shared with Helena eight years ago and more, she was arrested by the black and white photograph he had lain on top of the photo of Helena's daughter. It was a photo of the hotel bedroom in which James "Gentleman Jim" Wells had been found. Helena's father was sprawled in the middle of the bed, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. One of the women he had been with had likely pulled the sheet across his waist; the heart attack he had suffered wouldn't have allowed him the time or the freedom of movement necessary to cover himself. Empty champagne bottles were on the nightstand, and a woman - the one who hadn't fled after he had collapsed - was still half in the frame, a robe drooping off the shoulder that was visible and a cloud of hair, light-colored, grazing the exposed curve of her breast. Jim Wells, a.k.a. Charles J. Wells, Chuck Wells, Charles W. James, J. C. Wells, a premier dealer in stolen art and almost any other kind of valuable - jewelry, rare books, antiques. "Others would say when you're 74 anything can take you down. But he had a strong heart, better than men 20 years his junior, and there is that strange reference in the autopsy report to 'traces of a foreign substance.' Never could find out what that was."

Helena gazed at the picture of her father with little emotion. "I suppose there's more you want to show me," she said tonelessly.

"Indeed there is," Sam said, his geniality not merely jarring but menacing, as if he could be as expansive and joking as he wished since he knew Helena would be powerless to reject what he was going to propose. He dug into the envelope and took out another photograph. "Six years ago your father dies, and not three years later, your brother dies as well. That must have been tough. Charlie dies in prison, yet they could never identify the inmate who killed him." This photograph showed a man sitting on his bed, slumped against the wall, head hanging down, touching his chest, his workshirt, similar to Helena's, covered with a dark stain that had seeped into his pants. "The really odd thing was that no one could explain how someone was able to get into a locked cell to stab him."

Helena's face registered no more emotion than when she had seen the photograph of her father, but her hand hovered over the image, as if she might touch her brother's head. "Bear with me," Sam said, "I've got one more." The last photograph he took out of the envelope was in color, a publicity shot of a well-dressed, middle-aged man standing on a red carpet in front of the entrance of one of the city's better-known art museums, waving at the small crowd that had gathered and displaying on his other arm a stunningly beautiful and much younger woman. Sam slapped it on top of the other ones. "I know you know who he is."

"Nate Burdette," Helena said indifferently.

"Your father's protegé and, so I hear, one of your old boyfriends," Sam said, disappointed. "Why are you making me tell you things about him, Ms. Wells, that you already know?"

"Because you seem to have all the answers," Helena said, her voice still lifeless, but her eyes, raking over Myka's face for the first time since Sam had started showing her the photographs, filled with contempt. As though Myka could have stopped this, should have stopped this.

But she hadn't known about the "extra" condition, still wasn't sure what Same expected Helena to do, although she could make a good guess. She had thought they were going to meet with Helena to discuss the work she would do for the FBI, ensure that the assistance she was to provide would be solely in the service of the agency, that there would be no repeat of what happened eight years ago when Helena had used her cover with the FBI to commit an art theft, which, to this day, remained officially unsolved. Had there been anyone else with her combination of talent, skill, and expertise, the agency would have been more than content to let her serve her sentence, but Helena Wells was unique, one of a kind, and when, through her attorney, she had offered to provide what she had played at providing them all those years ago, only this time "with feeling," with sincerity, the agency had cautiously accepted. There were conditions attached to the agency's acceptance, and Myka had expected that their meeting would be spent going over them - as they were outlined in the agreement, or so she had expected. Supposedly Sam had been a last-minute replacement for the FBI attorney who was to have accompanied her. She wasn't surprised by Justice's interest - they had been the ones to put Helena away - and they would have the ultimate authority in determining whether her assistance justified a reduction of her sentence, but she had been surprised that they wanted to be represented at the meeting.

It was a mystery no longer. But they were a team, she and Sam, they were the representatives of the law that Helena, her father, and her brother had flouted for years. There could be no cracks, no chinks in the wall that they presented; they needed to be too tall for Helena to climb, too deep for her to dig under, too wide for her to go around. Helena was a supplicant asking the law for mercy, not an equal bargaining for concessions. Sam's alpha-male behavior, the crude ploy of the photographs, it was meant to unsettle Helena. Myka didn't like any of it, but she was one-half of the wall, and she couldn't break.

"Yes, he was my father's protegé, and, yes, we were briefly involved, both about a million years ago. But there isn't any "Nate and I," there's no relationship of any kind. I'm not sure what association you think I still have with him." Helena pushed the photograph toward Sam. Her flicking it away revealed the one of her brother's dead body slumped against the wall. Helena visibly swallowed, and Myka felt an unwanted tug of pity for her.

"The rumor is that Burdette had a hand in your father's and brother's deaths." When Helena didn't so much as blink, Sam pressed on. "Practically a second son to your old man, best buddies with brother Charlie, and then the squeeze of the little sister. What happened to the closeness?"

"He wanted to expand into activities my father had no interest in. That's all I know."

"I doubt that." Sam began to put the photographs back into the envelope. "It wasn't amicable, the split. Your dad didn't want any part of the drug smuggling and extortion and general thuggery that Burdette was getting into. I guess it was, um, too uncouth for him." He held out the photograph of Christina with the Winslows to Helena. "I know this isn't an ideal picture. I'm sure you'd like it better if you were the one holding her hand, but that's awfully hard to do from in here. And, besides, it's a picture of your kid." Helena glared at him, and Sam, with an air of wounded innocence, poked the photograph into the envelope. "Maybe Burdette was the one who set you up, lured you into that securities sting. Ever think of that?"

Helena gave him a pained smile. "That was solely the result of my own. . . stupidity, as you called it." She shifted, seeking a more comfortable position in her chair. "Nate went his own way years ago, long before my father and Charlie died."

"Some people have long memories," Sam said.

Helena's eyes landed on Myka and then flitted away so quickly that Myka was almost convinced that the look was inadvertent. But she didn't chase Helena's glance, turning her attention to Sam, who had opened the briefcase and tossed the envelope in it. He held up a finger, although Myka doubted he had forgotten anything, and took out the pen, clicking it repeatedly. He placed it on the neglected agreement. "We want Nate Burdette, and you're going to deliver him to us, Ms. Wells. It's as simple as that."

Helena laughed in disbelief. "I haven't spoken to Nate since my father's funeral. We have no business relationships, and our affair, such as it was, ended when I was 20. I have no power to deliver him to you."

"It all depends on how you define power. I bet you can think of something he wants. Or persuade him that there's something he wants. You set up the con, and we come in for the kill."

Helena started to shake her head, the swinging becoming more pronounced as her "No's" grew louder. "No. Absolutely not. One of the conditions in that agreement you're holding in front of me like a carrot is that nothing I'm asked to do will jeopardize the safety of my daughter and mother. Going after Nate would put them in danger. I won't do it."

"Okay, then," Sam said easily, sliding the agreement back towards the briefcase. "We're done, Ms. Wells. Good luck in the custody battle with Ben Winslow." He started rising from his chair only to sit down again. "You know you don't have a chance against him. Right now your daughter is with who, your mother? The ex-wife of a criminal and the mother of one? I'm sure a judge will look favorably on that arrangement." He looked at Helena intently. "He'll win, and while you can convince yourself that a judge will force him to let Christina visit you, he'll find ways to get out of it. And Christina, she may visit, but she's only four years old, and you're going to be here for a long time, Ms. Wells. Right now, it's just the securities fraud. But our office is scouring everything we have on you. I don't care if it's citations for jaywalking - we'll hang them on you, and you'll sit here until Christina's a mother herself."

Helena seemed to shrink into herself, the bleakness that had slipped over her face when she had first seen the photograph of Christina returning and drawing down her eyes, her mouth. Myka didn't say anything, but she put a warning hand on Sam's leg. He didn't look at her. "Little kids, they get distracted. And Ben Winslow's shiny new wife is going to have a shiny new baby. I bet Christina's already excited about it. I bet she sometimes she refers to Mrs. Winslow as her mother. She doesn't mean to, I'm sure, but little kids,they can get confused. You know how they are. Christina's part of a family now. How long before coming to visit you becomes a chore -"

"Sam." Myka said it quietly but firmly. "Stop."

He still didn't look at her. "Part of me doesn't want you to sign that agreement, Ms. Wells. Part of me wants you to tell us to get the hell out of here. You ruin lives, and that beautiful little girl deserves better than you. You sign that agreement, and you have a shot at keeping her, but I'm not sure I want that. Ben Winslow may be a vindictive little piss ant when he feels he's been wronged, which is probably why he's going after you so hard, but he's still a damn sight better role model than you."

"Sam," Myka was louder. "Stop it, now."

Finally he twisted his head to stare at her. "I'm not telling Ms. Wells anything that doesn't run through her mind a dozen times a day. Am I, Ms. Wells?" Helena had dropped her head and was working her hands, one over the other, in her lap. "The only one who can put your family in danger is you. You're supposed to be clever. After all, you fooled the FBI for 18 months. You're telling me you can't con one man?"

"I want to speak to Myka. . . Agent Bering alone." Helena hadn't looked up from her lap, but there was nothing tentative about her tone. She was demanding, not requesting.

At Myka's nod, Sam glanced around the room for the intercom, spotting it before she did on the wall behind them. Having seen the surveillance cameras in the corners, Myka belatedly realized their meeting with Helena was being recorded, probably not watched all that closely given who she and Sam were, but any guard looking at his monitor might have wondered why Helena seemed to have aged decades in the span of a few minutes and why she, the quieter, nearly motionless one of Helena's two visitors, had suddenly started moving in her chair, touching her partner, finally leaning around him and saying, unmistakably, "Stop." Sam was speaking into the intercom, telling the guards that they were almost done. He asked to be buzzed out and when the door lock clicked, he gave Myka a long look, which she steadily returned, before he closed the door behind him.

She fought the impulse to say "I'm sorry," to apologize for how Sam had begun using Christina as a club, battering Helena with her own fears, but she had cracked the wall, her and Sam's wall, the endless, unscalable wall of the law, when she had told him to stop, and that was as much of an apology as Helena was going to get.

"I'd like to believe that you didn't know anything about it, that the Myka Bering I knew wouldn't willingly endanger a four-year-old girl and a 63-year-old grandmother to capture a criminal who's never bothered to hide. Nate's always believed he's invincible, and now I'm your best chance for getting him?" Helena's eyes had lifted to hers, weary and pleading and derisive all at once. "I was telling the truth when I said I hadn't spoken to him in years, but he's a hard man, more ruthless than my father could stomach." She paused, taking a deep breath. "You have to promise me, Myka, that you'll keep them safe. It's the only way I'll sign this fucking piece of paper. Promise me."

Myka couldn't make the promise; she couldn't guarantee their safety. But she couldn't look away from those eyes.

" _You've never told me that you love me," she mock complained as Helena curled against her chest. "I've told you at least a hundred times."_

" _You're saying it enough for both of us," Helena said wryly, but she leaned her head back to give Myka a kiss under her chin. "Besides, haven't I been showing it enough for your satisfaction?"_

" _Still, it's nice to hear the words," Myka grumbled._

" _I don't say those words lightly. In fact, I don't recall ever saying them, except to my mother. And I'm fairly certain that's not how you want to hear them from me." Myka squirmed, muttering "ow" as Helena turned, shoulder rubbing against shoulder, to face her. "When I say them, not if, but when, Myka Ophelia Bering, I want you to have no doubt that I mean them."_

_Myka felt her breath catch at the seriousness of Helena's expression. "So what do I do in the meantime?"_

" _Just look into my eyes. They'll tell you everything you need to know."_

She couldn't read what Helena's eyes were telling her. And even if she could, it would be a reflection only of what she wanted to see, as it had been all those years ago. But it didn't matter. She wasn't going to let a little girl who loved toy elephants become a target for Nate Burdette. "I promise," she said.

Helena flipped through the agreement and scrawled her name on the last page. "You can tell the guards to let your boyfriend back in."

"Ex-husband," Myka automatically corrected.

Helena didn't look up from the agreement, apparently absorbed in reordering the pages, but she was smiling slightly. "I have to confess that his charms are lost on me."

Myka thought about the things she could say about charm, specifically the ability to be charming, or for that matter, the ability to be intriguing or mysterious or seductive and how they had become the qualities that least attracted her, but she said none of them. She had already given away too much about herself, just as she had feared she would.

Sam showed no triumph when Helena handed him the agreement, merely slipping it into the briefcase. "It'll take a few days to process your release," he said. "As soon as we get all the requisite approvals, we'll let you know." Then he waited at the door as if some inner time limit he had set on being in the same room with Helena had expired. Myka stood, awkwardly, between the table and the door, unwilling to join Sam on the other side of the invisible boundary line he had drawn but not wanting to sit at the table with Helena, who had relaxed against the back of her chair, meeting over, her eyes almost completely closed. Possibly she was letting her mind wander or daydreaming of when she would next see her daughter, but more likely plotting, Myka thought dourly.

She heard the heavy tread of a guard at the door and then it opened. There were two guards, one to escort her and Sam back to the prison's main entrance and another to take Helena back to her cell. Helena obediently rose, not glancing at Myka as she passed her, Following their guard down the corridor, Myka twisted her head over her shoulder. Helena was at the opposite end, her guard keying in a code to open the door. It swept shut behind them, the echo of the closing click sounding louder and more forceful than the click itself.

Myka tried not to listen as Sam congratulated themselves on having gotten exactly what they wanted from Helena Wells. He had taken off his suit jacket, crooking his finger under the collar as he slung it over his shoulder, and he was whistling a pop song as he pressed the remote to unlock the car. Myka wanted to scream at him to stop whistling, but she was afraid if she started yelling at him now that she wouldn't stop until they had returned to the city. She bargained with herself that if she waited until the prison was out of sight, she could then begin the conversation, calmly, about what had happened in the room with Helena. But once the last blinding glint of the fences had disappeared from the rearview mirror, she said, tightly, thinly, not calmly, "Stop the car. I want you to stop the car."

Sam had been sampling the limited offerings of the radio, limited not only by their location but also by the fact that they were in an agency-owned car. "Are you okay?" he asked, concerned.

"No, I'm not okay. Stop the car now, Sam. I need to get out."

He slowed and cut over to the shoulder. As soon as the car stopped, Myka was flinging open her door, shouting, "You blindsided me in there, Sam. Why the hell did you do that to me? I asked you if there was anything I should know before we met with her, and you neglected to tell me that you had changed the whole goddamn deal." She paced the gravel, kicking rocks from her path.

"I'm sorry." Sam was out of the car, hands on hips, head bowed, as if he had run all the way from the prison. "I knew you wouldn't like it, and I didn't want that hanging over us when we met with her. What the deal was going to be, that it was going to be about Burdette, it was decided long before you entered the picture."

"It's one thing to use her kid as leverage, it's another to make her a pawn. That's low, Sam. Helena may not be better than that kind of treatment, but I thought we were."

He sighed, passing his hand over his hair. At the sides, it was still thick and dark blond, but on top, where his fingers were pressing the strands, it was lighter and thinner, less like hair and more like wisps of butter-colored cotton. "Burdette's an all-around mobster, but what he specializes in is smuggling, drugs, counterfeit merchandise. . . people. Recently he's gotten into guns, and that really has us worried. He's dangerous and smart and completely amoral. The ATF placed two undercover agents in his organization One we haven't heard from in over two months, the other we found, in pieces, in the trunk of an abandoned car."

"So you think that because he worked for her father once upon a time and because they were an item before cell phones existed that Helena can bring him to you," Myka jeered.

He started to come around the car, as if he could more persuasively plead his case nearer to her, but at her glare, he sighed again and slumped onto the car's hood. "All we need is to get close enough to him that he slips up, says the wrong thing, agrees to the wrong scheme. All we need is for her to open the door, we'll be the ones barreling through it. There's history between the Burdette and the Wellses. Don't tell me she's not good enough to find some way of using it." He squinted at her. "What did you promise her, Myka?"

"That I would keep her daughter safe. And I will, Sam. If this thing starts going south, I'll yank Helena out of it. I don't care if you don't get Burdette." She stopped her pacing long enough to cross her arms over her chest and give him a glacially cold stare.

"That's why I didn't want you on this, why Pete didn't either. But we were overruled." Still squinting, he craned his neck to look up at the sky. "You've got a code, and you follow it, no matter what. Just like you're not going to let yourself make the same mistakes that you did eight years ago. You're going to go into overdrive trying to prove to everyone that you're on top of it this time. She's not worth all the emotional energy, Myka. One hour in a room with her, and you're already worrying about how you're going to protect her daughter."

"I'd be worrying no matter who had been in the room with us, Sam. We jammed her, we put her between a rock and a hard place and then we got behind the rock and started pushing." She uncrossed her arms only to recross them, hugging her chest tightly. "Just because I'm concerned that we're putting Christina and Jemma at risk doesn't mean that Helena's gotten into my head." She was surprised at how easily the name of Helena's mother had come to her. She had seen her only a few times during the 18 months that she and Helena had worked together, but she could clearly bring Jemma to mind, the light brown hair just beginning to gray, the blue eyes, the unthreatening prettiness that suggested, when young, she could have been a country lass straight from a nineteenth century English novel. The only feature she seemed to share with her daughter was an extraordinarily fair complexion, which, in Helena, framed by all that black hair, could appear bloodless.

"Are you sure, Myka?" Sam asked softly. "You dumped me for her, remember? I knew what you were like pre-Helena. That Myka smiled a lot more often than you, for one thing."

"And that Myka also thought someday she'd be the director of the FBI and, in the meantime, she'd settle down with the cute junior attorney who kept insisting that he wasn't ready for anything serious." She approached the car with slow, exaggerated steps, swinging her legs out with each stride before planting her feet with overdeliberate care, like a driver under the influence asked to walk a straight line. She reached for his hand. "Her illusions were bound to be punctured, with or without Helena's assistance."

"You thought I was cute? Despite the fact that I didn't have a mane of black hair and a phony British accent?" He drew her to him and kissed her gently.

Her mouth remaining against his, Myka murmured, "I think the accent's one of the few real things about her."

"I shouldn't have let you go. She was a vulture, and I was an idiot." He laughed ruefully, kissing her once more. "I'm still an idiot. Except for that brief period of time when I was smart enough to be married to you. Tell me, please, why did I let us get divorced?"

"Because we never saw each other. You said it was like being married to your college roommate, except that you saw him more often and you were pretty sure that you didn't have sex with him, although you couldn't vouch for what happened during homecoming weekend your freshman year." As he leaned in, seeking yet another kiss, she pushed his face away, teasingly, but away. She could excuse it by telling herself that the meeting had left her too raw, too angry to pretend that all was right between them, but her uncertainty ran deeper. The "exes with benefits" they had fallen into over the past few months was skidding perilously close to dating - for the third time. How often did you revisit the past, attempting to substitute better choices for all the bad ones you had made before you realized that you couldn't change anything? She had been thinking more often lately about shaking things up, leaving the FBI, leaving the city. She wasn't ready to do either yet, but once this arrangement with Helena reached its end, good or bad, she would . . . give the idea of "spontaneously" striking out for somewhere new serious consideration. She smiled a skewed smile, all too familiar with how slowly she could approach a "sudden change."

"What are you smiling about?" Sam asked, paternally chucking her under her chin.

She tried to disguise her irritation by shaking her head. "Nothing in particular." She let her gaze wander over the hills that had given their drive a continuously rolling pitch that had been like riding waves. They were tawny with a winter's residue of dead brambles and grass, early shoots peeping greenly in the tangle. Birds were diving into the tops of trees and as quickly reascending, gliding on a breeze that was cool but promised warmth. This area would be lovely once everything was in full bloom, and Myka wondered whether the women found it harder harder to stare at the cement walls of their cells or the grass and trees and wildflowers that grew outside them. The women would have access to parts of the prison's grounds, but the grounds were hemmed in like quilt squares by the fences. Free to feel the sun on their faces but only as free to walk in it as the guards and barriers would allow. When Myka had been a teenager on a family vacation to northern California and had seen San Quentin nestled near the bay, she had thought how strange it must feel to be in the middle of such postcard-worthy scenery and yet be so remote from it at the same time.

That remoteness was no longer so foreign to her. It was an odd quarantine she existed in - she was in Pete's office all the time, for meetings, conference calls, chats late in the day, but she was always aware that she was outside it too. She could look, visit, touch but never have. She had never known that mistakes had an odor and a taste, but they did; hers were salty and thick like phlegm or sour and thin like stomach acid when she saw Pete laughing with one of the assistant directors or when she met the bold eyes of a woman with long, dark hair.

"We need to get going," Sam said, sliding off the hood and shaking his pants down from where they had crawled up his legs. Almost absently, Myka noticed that one sock wasn't the same blue as the other. When they were married, his socks had always matched. Maybe that had been the problem with their marriage if socks that matched were a selling point. But Sam wasn't distracted by socks, which perhaps said something not so positive about her. He was matter-of-fact, businesslike, the kisses forgotten. With a crispness that he hadn't had when he had spoken mournfully - only half in jest - about having let her go, he said, "We haven't set a timetable, but we want Burdette soon. She's going to try to stall and delay as much as she can. Don't let her. Don't hesitate to remind her of what she has to lose if she doesn't cooperate."

Although the birds still sang and the wind still teased her hair, the sunlight dimmed when she heard his car door slam, and she felt that she might be, if not on the moon, then somewhere almost as far as away, and from that distant point, nothing was green and spring-like. Instead, everything was brown and drear, and she was empty, just like the long prison corridor down which Helena had quietly walked with her guard, not once looking back.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this chapter was going to include Christina and Helena's mother as well, but it got too long, so that will take up chapter three. I'm trying to introduce early on most of the other characters who will figure in this fic, so this chapter and the next will still be more set-up/introduction than plot. But there will be plot. . . and angst, plenty of that. So buckle your seat belts for a long ride.
> 
> I think I said this in the notes to the first chapter, but I'll just state here (again) that this fic will have strong language and sexual content. I won't preface every chapter with this warning, but I did want to state it once more.

Steve was with her in the car this time, and she wasn't sweating. At least not so much that she had to worry about taking off her suit jacket. Sam had come over the night before, and though she had spent an extra 45 minutes at the gym reassuring herself that if she had any anxiety about the next day she was ridding herself of it now, she had practically stripped him at the door. He had eyed her uncertainly as she unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants, but he hadn't asked her to slow down, taking her before they made it back to her bedroom. It had gone like that the rest of the night, not rushed, not rough, but quick and without apology for mistimed clinches and errant gropings. Eventually Sam, with a groan, had rolled away, muttering that he had to get some sleep, and Myka had lain, taut and tense, staring up at the ceiling.

But he hadn't gone to sleep, not right away, trying to relax her by saying that it was all right to be nervous, that it wasn't just working with Helena now but shouldering all that had happened eight years ago as well. And if she felt it was too much, she could quit. Damn the FBI, damn Justice. He could support her. His solicitousness had irritated her, and though she knew he meant it sincerely - what wasn't sincerely meant when it was said after sex and the both of you, or one of you, were on the verge of sleep - she recalled that he had made no such gesture when they had gone to the prison to meet with Helena. It was easy to be supportive, magnanimous even, when you had gotten what you wanted. They - the FBI, Justice - needed Helena to agree to an impossible deal, and what was the bone they had tossed her? Not Christina, she was Helena's hope, Helena's dream. Myka Bering was the bone, the one face among all those remorseless agency faces that Helena might still trust in. Because Myka was honest, and when it came to Helena, she had been a fool, maybe still was, and there was no better dupe for a con artist than an honest fool. If she said she would protect Christina then she would, no matter how foolish, how impossible that promise proved to be.

She was being paranoid. Neither Sam's bosses nor Pete's bosses had any idea that she would make a promise to Helena to ensure that she agreed to the deal. In fact, the last thing they would want would be for Helena to have a claim of any sort on one of their agents. Maybe such a clear and early indication that her objectivity wasn't to be trusted would be enough to get her reassigned - she should wake Sam up and tell him to tell his bosses that she had threatened to put an end to the deal if she thought that Christina was in danger.

But she hadn't woken him up. Instead she had continued to stare at the ceiling, asking herself if she was willing to do this each and every night, ceaselessly roll the doubt over and over, as if she were playing dice with herself and hoping they wouldn't come up snake eyes every time - whether she should quit, whether she could figure out Helena's game plan (because she had one), whether she could survive days, weeks, months of working with her without killing her. Because even when things had been good, Myka had always wanted to kill her at some point. Helena was just that aggravating.

_She was late into work this morning, her dental appointment having run late, not because of any problems with her teeth because she never had problems with her teeth - she flossed every night before bed - but because the appointment before hers had run late. Probably because that patient had problems with his teeth. Her supervisor Bates and her partner were in Bates' office, she could hear their laughter. She was late for the 9:00 meeting that Bates had scheduled for her and Pete to meet their new outside consultant. Bates looked mild-mannered enough with his receding hairline and his equally recessive features, but he could be a dick. He had refused to tell them who the consultant was, saying smugly, "You'll find out on Monday." So she was going into the meeting cold and - she checked her watch - 20 minutes late. Wonderful._

_Bates and Pete were on either side of a woman with long, dark hair; they were all looking at the impressive view of the city's skyline offered by a bank of windows, which wrapped around the walls to form an almost unbroken L, a surprisingly impressive view given that this was the office of a team supervisor, not an assistant director. Catching movement at the doorway from the corner of his eye, Bates waved Myka in, saying "And this is Lattimer's partner, Myka Bering. Although you'll be expected to work with all the members of the team, Myka will serve as your point person."_

_The woman held out her hand, smiling winningly but with the faintest hint of surprise, as though something about Myka wasn't quite what she expected. If Myka hadn't been coming in late, coming in without the least idea of who this woman was, she wouldn't have let the smile bother her, because rationally, she knew, the woman's surprise wasn't a negative reaction. But when she was off-balance, not on her game, she reacted instinctively, not rationally, and Myka had had it hard wired into her at a young age that surprising people was usually a code word for disappointing them. So her smile in response was tight, and she took the woman's hand a little too aggressively, a little too firmly. The woman registered the tension and squeezed Myka's hand just as firmly, but she said with a lightness that had Bates and Pete politely chuckling, "When your partner told me that I was going to look up to you, I had no idea he meant it literally."_

_Beanpole. Scarecrow. Andre the Giant. (It was too much to ask of nine-year-olds to find a way of rhyming Myka and Andre or to come up with a clever play on their names. It was too difficult for her some 17 years later.) It didn't matter that the third grade boys weren't clever because the labels still stung. Terrific - she was late, at a loss, and feeling like she was nine years old again in front of this woman, who managed to make a seemingly casual, seemingly thrown-together style - jacket, blouse, slacks all subtly mismatched - look elegant._

_"Not used to being in someone's shadow?" It wasn't much of a comeback, not that the woman's mild joke deserved one. Myka recognized that her response, in fact, was less comeback than insult. She could have said something on the order of "I try not to block the sun," which would have been an equally mild joke about her height, equally as tossed off. Aimless remarks, nervous comments, it was what people did to cover the awkwardness of being introduced. What they didn't do was throw down the proverbial gauntlet, even if an aimless remark might have the tiniest of barbs._

_The woman's eyes narrowed (her eyes would be good at that, Myka thought, the way they rode those cheekbones), but her tone remained light, "You'll never be tall enough for that, Agent Bering."_

Steve was comfortable with silence. They hadn't spoken since they had left the city. If it had been Sam again in the car with her, he would have been patting her knee (she was driving this time) and repeating, over and over, how much confidence he had in her. If the car had been a DeLorean from  _Back to the Future_ and not some mid-price agency-owned sedan, Pete would have been her partner and filling the silence with groan-worthy wisecracks and highway games he had invented on the spot, such as Are The People in the Car Ahead of Us Giving Each Other Hand Jobs? and Have Long Have You Gone on a Car Ride Without Stopping to Pee?

Steve's eyes were closed, and Myka wondered if he was meditating or going through some relaxation routines. She wasn't always sure if she understood the difference in practice. Sensing that her attention was on him, he blinked a few times and turned his head, regarding her as he almost always did, with a calm expectancy that suggested he could handle whatever she planned to throw at him. Generally he did, game for anything from an all-night surveillance to spending hours comparing documents, searching for the error that would mark one as the fake. She smiled and shook her head, signaling that she had nothing, for now, to throw at him.

"If I were her," he said, "the first thing I'd want to do is see my kid."

"That's not the first thing she should be expecting," Myka countered, knowing what subject Steve was indirectly raising. It was an odd circumspection in a man who had a talent for calling out someone when she was lying. "She knows that there are going to be rules she'll have to follow -"

"And ankle monitors to wear," Steve interjected. "But, still, she's going to want to know when she can see her daughter, and. . . ."

"Her attorney should have informed her," Myka said swiftly, brusquely. "Our part of the deal is that we recommend reducing her sentence. We're not involved in the custody battle she's having with Christina's father. We're not taking sides in that." As part of his maneuvering to gain full custody of his daughter, Ben Winslow had worked to have Helena's access to Christina limited, and he had succeeded. Christina could remain primarily in the care of her grandmother (with time spent at the Winslow home as well), but Helena would be allowed to spend only a few hours with her on a weekly basis and those visits had to be supervised - by the FBI. It shouldn't have surprised Myka what an influential senator, such as Ben Winslow's father, could get away with arranging, but the fact that someone from the team would have to chaperone those visits dismayed her, especially as she would most likely be the chaperone.

"But it'll look to her like we knew and didn't tell her because, of course, we did know and didn't tell her. I would prefer working with someone who didn't already hold a grudge against us."

"I'll take a grudge-holding Helena Wells any day over someone who's pretending to be helpful. She's been picking this agreement apart in her mind from the day she signed it, trying to find a weakness in it." And trying to find the weaknesses in the agents she would be working with, Myka knew.

"Don't let your past history with her cloud your judgment," Steve counseled. "She's not going to risk losing her daughter -"

It wasn't just that Steve habitually weighed both the positives and negatives of any situation or that he always recommended, when he could, a balanced, even-handed approach, but that, for the past several months, he and his husband Paul had been interviewing women to find one to serve as a surrogate mother. Her emotionally steady partner of three years had developed a sentimental side that would have him become misty-eyed at any talk of babies or the adorable doings of small children.

"Don't make the mistake of thinking she's like you," Myka snapped. "She won't risk Christina's life, but she'll be willing to risk a lot if the prize is big enough. If she thinks she sees an out, one where she can scuttle the deal  _and_  take off with her daughter somewhere, she will. In a heartbeat. Don't expect her, even now, to play straight with us."

"Straight, given her sexual history, no," Steve said, making a joke that Myka's scowl recognized but didn't welcome. "But you need to allow for the possibility, Mykes, that she's changed. Not just because it's the right thing to do but because the success of this arrangement depends on it. If you're not open to trusting her, none of this will work."

It was rare that anyone on the team called her Mykes. It was Pete's nickname for her, and most left its use reserved for him. But she and Steve had grown close since they had been partnered, and Steve would use it when he wanted to press home a message. Exactly as he was doing now. Being suspicious of Helena's every motive would be as damaging as being blind to them had been eight years ago. Myka had frequently been appreciative of the qualities that Steve brought to an assignment, his coolness and objectivity complementing her intensity and determination, but she might never be as grateful that he was her partner as she was now.

As they drew nearer to the prison, Myka thought she spotted the place on the road where Sam had pulled off at her urging, and they had argued about the real arrangement that Helena was striking with the agencies, which was the luring of her father's old protegé, Nate Burdette, into a trap of her making. That part of the deal Pete hadn't yet shared with the rest of the team, and Myka was uncomfortable that she wasn't able to talk about it with Steve. She must have been disguising her feelings better than she thought because he hadn't yet accused her of hiding something from him. But that was probably because her unease with having to work with Helena again was so obvious that her unease about having to ensnare Burdette simply bled into it.

It had been less than two weeks since the meeting with Helena, but the promise of spring that Myka had seen in the buds on the trees and the tentative greening of the hills was, if not fulfilled, far enough along that real spring couldn't be far behind. Overlaying branches like a mist were the spear-tips of new leaves and the grass beneath was no longer springing up unevenly, a patchy, almost scabrous growth surrounded by expanses of brown, but a rolling carpet of a green so brilliant that Myka felt her eyes beginning to water. Even the prison and its wire barricades were looking softer; the bushes on the grounds were in bloom, and wildflowers, white, yellow, and pale blue, were clustering at the fence posts. The guards weren't any softer, however, and though she and Steve did not have to go through the multiple security checks since they weren't entering the prison proper, they were limited to a public area containing a few rows of chairs as they waited for Helena to be processed out. Only one other person was in the room, a woman, not much older than a girl, who was typing on a laptop, occasionally flicking a strand of hair away from her face. Myka didn't have a clear view of her features, enough to note a pointed chin, made all the sharper by the frown of concentration, and a slightly-too-long nose; what she saw was enough to hint at an irregularity that would make her memorable rather than conventionally, and forgettably, pretty. It was also enough to make Myka think she had seen the girl before, or someone like her.

The scuffling of several feet behind them, voices, some male, some female, a door clicking open, and Myka turned around to see Helena emerging, escorted by a guard. She was dressed in faded jeans and a cotton, button-down shirt; had the jeans been dotted with smears of old paint and the shirt unbuttoned and hanging open, the outfit could have been what she wore when she painted, if she wasn't wearing anything underneath the shirt. The memory of Helena turned away from her easel, the jeans, beltless, hanging off her hips, the shirt revealing the pale crescents of her breasts, and the smile, teasing and secretive and indulgent, as if Myka bumbling into her studio uninvited was exactly what she had expected, interposed itself onto the scene, and Myka had to close her eyes to stop seeing it. When she opened her eyes, she realized there really hadn't been a need to force the memory away, this older Helena wasn't smiling, and she looked swallowed by the clothing. She was holding a small bag, its plastic handles wrapped around her wrist. She murmured to the guard, who gave her a pat on the shoulder as he left her to return to the secured area, and Helena's dark eyes swept the waiting room, lingering on the girl before settling on Myka. Steve's presence she seemed not to register at all.

The girl was bounding out of her chair, laptop forgotten, and as she rushed past Myka to enfold Helena in a bruising hug, Myka didn't need to hear Helena say fondly, reprovingly, "Claudia," to remember where she had seen the girl's features before. They had been thicker, more masculine, and the brown hair hadn't had the red overtones. She had seen that chin and that nose on Joshua Donovan, Helena's "business partner" and her accomplice - although they hadn't been able to prove it, no more than they had been able to prove Helena's role in the art theft in Houston. Claudia released Helena after one more rib-cracking squeeze but didn't move away from her; the frown had returned and was trained on Myka and Steve.

"Your fed babysitters?" The tone was contemptuous.

"Agents Bering and Jinks, Federal Bureau of Investigation," Steve said lightly, flashing his credentials.

Claudia Donovan directed a look, distinctly unimpressed, at Myka. "So this is the famous Myka."

Who didn't know their history? The surprise faded, and she looked harder at Helena. What would have been her purpose in telling Claudia? The girl was a smartass, maybe that had been reason enough. A gibe coming from an unexpected direction to unsettle her. . . so that was the going price of their relationship, their former relationship. If she colored and stammered and gave the impression that she wanted to sink through the floor, she would have already given up the game; the only way through the embarrassment was. . . through it. Not allowing Claudia's gaze to drift away from hers, Myka said coolly, "The one who got away."

Helena shrugged, her expression unreadable, and Claudia filled in scornfully, "Can't say that I think it's a huge loss, Helena. If you want hot and uptight, they're a dime a dozen in the city. In fact, I know an investment banker, on the market after breaking up with her girlfriend -"

"Enough, Claudia. The only female I have any interest in is four years old with strawberry jam in the corners of her mouth." Helena's lips twisted up in the first sign of animation she had shown since coming through the door. "When can I see my daughter?"

"This afternoon," Myka said briefly. "But we have a lot we need to do before then."

"At least may I call my mother and let her know -"

Myka sliced the air sideways, cutting her off. "She already knows you're coming, Helena." With a quick glance at Steve, which she hoped told him not to volunteer more, she said, "We need to get going."

Claudia had known better than to try to argue that Helena could ride in her car. As Myka and Steve veered toward the agency sedan, Helena compliantly walking between them, Claudia shouted to Helena as she backpedaled toward an ancient Honda Civic, "I'll meet you at Mrs. F's. They're going to act like they found you the place, but it was me. You'll like it, trust me."

Myka stopped and watched as Claudia smirked at her and bowed mockingly. Finding appropriate lodgings for Helena was a chore she had dreaded, especially since living with Jemma wasn't an option. They had needed to find an apartment or rooms that the owner was willing to let to a felon and that were within a reasonable distance of the agency's offices, basic necessities, and at least a few of the agents' homes. But they hadn't needed to start a search, Helena's attorney had called Pete, claiming a remarkable stroke of luck. A widow of his acquaintance, living in one of the city's northern neighborhoods, was willing to rent the third floor of her townhome to Helena. She had been informed of Helena's history, the attorney assured Pete, and was willing not only to welcome a convict into her home but to offer a discounted rate as well. The townhome was located in an area that had, after decades of neglect, undergone rapid gentrification, and rents were astronomical, beyond what the agency was able to subsidize. But for Helena, Mrs. Frederic was happy to make an exception.

After an initial vetting of Irene Frederic, which uncovered no known ties to Helena Wells, her father, or her brother, and no significant red flags, only a few arrests for student demonstrations and protests that dated back to the late 1960s, Myka and Steve went to her home to interview her. The file on her was correspondingly thin. After graduating from Columbia University, she had served in the Peace Corps and returned to work for various community organizations. Marrying an attorney who represented one of the organizations, she had stayed at home to raise their three sons, and, after they were grown, she had resumed her work, eventually becoming director of a nonprofit that provided health services to low-income families. Her husband had died several years ago, and she had never remarried, continuing to live, alone, in the brownstone she and her husband had purchased in the mid-1970s at a price that would barely cover the down payment on the same property now.

Myka had expected a kindly-looking grandmother, but the woman who opened the door at their knock had the slightly impatient air of authority that Myka was more accustomed to seeing in the corporate executives she interviewed (or interrogated, as it sometimes turned out). Mrs. Frederic was wearing a business suit, an olive-colored jacket and skirt with an intricately patterned black and olive scarf billowing up from the neckline of her jacket to frame a face with a strong jaw and alert dark eyes. Her hair, tightly braided, had been gathered up into a bun that more strongly resembled a turban, and she looked like a woman prepared to lead a budget meeting, not the retiree who had indicated - through Helena's attorney - that her mornings were generally free. The interview hadn't revealed any red flags either, Mrs. Frederic explaining in a quiet voice that discouraged interruption her desire to support Helena in her efforts at rehabilitation. When asked how Helena's situation had come to her attention, she responded, with a smile strangely reminiscent of Helena's in that it seemed to hint at a secret she might be willing, with the proper enticement, to disclose, that Helena's attorney had served on the board of her former employer. He had reached out to her, and she had answered. She had concluded the interview by showing them the rooms, which actually formed a small apartment on the third floor - living room, kitchen/dining space, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The rooms were furnished, and the living room, which was the most generously sized of the rooms, opened onto a balcony that was large enough to hold a table and two chairs. She volunteered that she and her husband had converted the third floor into an apartment for the youngest of their sons, who lived at home while he attended medical school. But that had been many years ago. She sighed, gesturing at the furniture, acknowledging that everything was a little out of date. Myka couldn't shake the sense that Mrs. Frederic had been putting on a performance since they had first entered her home, but she couldn't put a finger on any one thing that had struck her as false. Steve had felt the same, but nothing had seemed an outright lie.

"It was as if she knew," Steve said, when they had returned to the car. "She knew enough not to lie, but I felt that most of the truth she was keeping to herself." He rubbed blond hair so closely cut that it looked like bristles. "Unfortunately, I don't think we have enough to decline her offer."

That had been Myka's assessment as well, though seeing Claudia's smirk and hearing her claim that "Mrs. F." had been her idea had Myka regretting that she hadn't expressed her doubts about Helena's living situation to Pete. It was part of Helena's arrangement that she couldn't associate with anyone who had criminal ties, and if Claudia Donovan was anything like her brother . . . . Walking away from the sedan as Steve opened a rear door for Helena, Myka called the office, asking that someone from the team run a background check on Claudia. When she slipped into the front passenger seat, Steve having taken the wheel, she looked over the seat back at Helena, who sat in the middle, her hands held limply in her lap, plastic bag at her side, her face expressionless.

"What's your relationship with Claudia Donovan?"

"I've taken her under my wing," Helena said. "She's nothing like Joshua, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm worried about anyone you would take under your wing," Myka said grimly.

"She's had a few scrapes with the law, but those were when she was still a minor, and her record's effectively been expunged. You can run all the checks you want, but you won't find anything." Helena had been studying her hands, but she looked up, meeting Myka's eyes. "She's a good kid, as smart and talented as Joshua but. . . less damaged. Wild but not criminal."

Myka turned around and buckled herself in, asking Steve, "What's in the bag?"

"Drawings and cards that her daughter sent her." Steve pulled out of the parking lot, Claudia's battered Civic following them.

"You could have just asked me," Helena said. After a silence, she asked, "Exactly when do I get to see Christina?"

"Exactly later," Myka growled in irritation. "Look, I know you're anxious to see her, but she's not my first priority. Running through the rules and, most importantly, getting a monitor on you and getting it programmed are."

"How long will that take? Christina gets out of preschool at 1:00, and I was hoping to have lunch with her. Will that be possible?"

Before she could stop herself, Myka raised a hand to her hair and lifted it from the back of her neck. "I don't know, Helena, we'll see." Helena had permission to visit Christina from 2:00 to 4:00, not a minute earlier, not a minute later.

"That's not a good sign, you playing with your hair," Helena said it evenly enough, but Myka could hear the tension threading through the words. "There's something you're not telling me. Please be honest with me, Myka, about Christina."

Steve spoke up, "Ben Winslow doesn't want his daughter around a convict -"

"I know that, Agent Jinks," Helena said, her voice rising. She was leaning forward anxiously. "That's why I've agreed to this absolutely hellacious deal in the first place -"

"Winslow petitioned a judge to have your access to Christina restricted. The judge agreed. You can see her once a week, Sunday afternoons from 1:00 to 5:00, and your visits have to be supervised by an agent. As a goodwill gesture, Winslow agreed that you could see your daughter this afternoon. We're due at Jemma's at 2:00. The visit ends at 4:00." Myka said rapidly, harshly, hoping to end any further talk on the subject.

"God, what a bloody cock-up this is," Helena said, the upholstery of the seat wheezing as she slumped against it. "I had hoped. . . I knew it would be too much to be allowed to live with her again, at least at first, but I had thought. . . ." Her voice trailed off, and Myka thought that the conversation might have ended, when Helena said icily, "How long have you known about this? Did you know when you and that Neanderthal of an ex-husband of yours met with me?"

"It's not our job, Helena, to referee between you and Ben Winslow. I would have thought your mother or your attorney would have told you." Myka wished she had remembered to bring some ibuprofen with her, her head was beginning to pound.

"It's not your job, but it would have been a kindness. I would have appreciated the gesture. If I had known that both Justice and the FBI were going to gang bang me, I'd have dropped my pants at that meeting and bent over the table for the both of you. We could have gotten it over with then." Myka could hear her moving restlessly against the seat. "I haven't seen my daughter in months. Ben managed to interfere with that as well. But today was going to be different. I was going to sit and pretend to listen to your asinine rules and suffer you to put that electronic cuff on me, and then I was going to spend whatever time I could with Christina. She's the only reason I'm doing any of this, and you've. . . ." The plaintiveness disappeared, and she asked quietly, "Did you and the Neanderthal have children, Myka?"

"I don't have children. But don't think you can wave the "You're not a mother" card at me, Helena, it won't work." Hampered by the seat belt, Myka awkwardly twisted around to look at her.

Helena's forehead was wrinkling, as if she were having to translate what Myka had said. The wrinkling eased, but when she spoke, there was an odd, halting quality to it, as though she wasn't entirely certain that she had translated Myka's words correctly. "Christina's not a scam I'm running. I wasn't looking to have a child, but she was a marvelously lovely accident. You think I'm such a schemer, Myka, but the best things in my life have been the things I've never intended," she finished softly.

There was no message, not about them, in the flat fixity of her gaze. Which was just as well, she wouldn't have believed it, Myka told herself. There had been four of them at the time when Helena had started working with the team. Pete had been newly married, Ray Williams had been two months from retirement, and Linda Bosworth, she might have been a potential target except for the fact that there were only two interests she had besides forensic accounting, long-distance running and younger men. Helena wasn't up for the former and couldn't pass for the latter. Myka had been the only valid option, and Helena had needed to have one team member who would unquestioningly support her. Have her back, both literally and figuratively. How soon had Helena decided on her? Not that first day, it couldn't have been.

Helena had turned her head and was listlessly looking out the window. Myka slid back against the seat. Maybe she should go through a few relaxation routines herself; they had more than an hour before they would reach the city.

Parking was tight near Mrs. Frederic's brownstone, and Steve had had to squeeze them into a space too close to a fire hydrant. City police might or might not recognize that it was an agency car. Claudia's ancient Civic was nowhere to be seen, but she was already there, eating what looked like a homemade cinnamon roll in the dining room. Parker, their tech expert, pudgy and cherub-cheeked, was sitting around the corner of the table from her, eating an even larger roll and loudly arguing about the merits, or demerits, of a video game. He stood up when he saw them, banging arms and knees against the table in his haste. Cramming the last of the roll in his mouth, he rubbed a napkin against his fingers, trying to scrub off the frosting.

"Hey," he said, in a spray of crumbs. "These are too good to pass up." He was blushing, and his polo shirt - there was no dress code that Parker had to observe other than being dressed, although the way he came in to the office sometimes suggested that was still too high a bar - was half-pulled out of khakis that might have last been used to change the oil in his car.

Claudia waggled her thumb at him. "This is the best you guys can do? No wonder you're written up in the  _Times_  or the  _Journal_  every week for some dipshit thing."

"Claudia." This time the reproof came from Mrs. Frederic, who entered the dining room carrying two glasses of milk. No business suit this time, but her attire was hardly casual, skirt, dressy blouse, heels. She set the milk on the table and, after quick glances at Myka and Steve that could be interpreted as welcoming, if the way a hawk zeroes in on a mouse could be called welcoming, leisurely assessed Helena. There was no sign of recognition, but Myka suspected Mrs. Frederic had little difficulty controlling her reactions. The assessment over, she held out her hand to Helena, "It's good to meet you, Ms. Wells. I hope you'll find the rooms to your liking."

"Helena." Her eyes flickered to the roll Claudia was polishing off. "I'm sure I will, especially if you serve breakfast."

"I'm afraid meals will be your own responsibility, but I do like to bake, and I'm always looking for taste-testers." She smiled at Parker. "Are you ready, Mr. Parker?"

He reached for the milk, and Myka had visions of him knocking over the glass and spilling its contents onto the expensive rug below. But he picked it up without incident and gulped down the milk. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said to Myka and Steve, "Everything's already upstairs." Hitching up his pants, which occasioned a dramatic eyeroll from Claudia, he led them out of the dining room to the staircase in the foyer.

As they climbed the stairs, the center carpet runner failing to mute the thunder of their feet, Myka could hear Helena asking Mrs. Frederic, "The FBI will be going over their house rules for me. What are yours?"

"The same we asked of Robert, our son, no loud music past 11:00, no illicit drugs, and if he wanted to have overnight guests, no nudity outside the apartment door."

"Sounds fair," Helena responded. "The second was never going to be a possibility, the first is eminently doable, and as for the third. . . ." The tone changed, and Myka heard an archness that she hadn't heard in years. "Am I allowed to bring sexual partners back to my rooms? Believe it or not, women's prisons are not the hotbeds of licentiousness you might think, and I have been so very lonely for companionship."

"Anyone whom you would want to socially associate with we'd have to vet first," Steve said.

"I guess we don't have to worry about the third either, Mrs. Frederic," Helena said.

As they shuffled into the apartment, Myka noticed how Helena scanned the living room and then sauntered into the kitchen, completing a circuit before disappearing down the short corridor to the bedrooms and bathroom, acting as if she were no more than an interested renter. She came back to the living room and went onto the balcony, looking over the railing at what Myka knew was a neck-breaking drop to the tiny first-floor patio. As if their thoughts had been on the same track, Helena smiled slyly at her and said, as she returned to the living room, "Ah, you've cut off all the escape routes." Sidling a look at Mrs. Frederic, who was sitting primly at the dining table just off the kitchen, she added, "And I suppose she knows jujitsu or something as lethal."

"I know enough to call the agents if you're not observing the rules," Mrs. Frederic said smoothly. "I have no desire to be charged with conspiracy or aiding and abetting."

"This is going to take care of a lot of the uncertainty," Parker said, holding the monitor up. He was kneeling on the rug next to a case that had held the monitor and a laptop. "Now I need your phones." He pointed to Myka and Steve. "It's already been coded in, I just want to test them and see if everything works as it should." He moved his thumbs rapidly over, first, Myka's phone and then Steve's and handed them back. "We're good to go."

With his mop of brown, shaggy hair, the stained khakis and the crumbs of cinnamon roll still dotting his polo shirt, Parker looked like a college sophomore, but he said with a firmness that Helena immediately obeyed, "Ms. Wells, I need you to take a seat on the sofa, right there, yes."

The monitor was unlatched, and as he walked on his knees to where Helena was sitting and pushed up the leg of her jeans, she glanced anxiously at Myka. She was like a child apprehensive about receiving a shot, and though Myka knew that Helena was no child and that the moment would pass, she heard herself saying, "It's light and waterproof, and it's not going to burn a hole through your leg."

"But you're going to know every minute of every day exactly where I am." Helena watched as Parker clicked the monitor shut.

Parker nodded. "It has GPS tracking. We'll track the signals centrally, but if you're outside the range, the system will also notify Myka and Steve." He pushed himself up and walked toward a large grocery bag with handles. "If something happens and you know you're not going to be where you're supposed to be at the time you're supposed to be there, I strongly suggest you call Myka and Steve. It'll go a lot easier on everyone, especially you." He pulled out another laptop and another phone and gave them to Helena. "These are agency-issued, they're what you'll use while you're working for us. You can also use the phone for personal calls, but -"

"They'll be tracked," Helena cut in. She summoned a thin smile for Parker. "My own phone and computer are out of the question, I assume?"

He nodded, and at Claudia's scoff from the doorway where she had been standing, a picture of surliness from her grimace to her crossed arms, he warned, "Don't try to be funny. Don't be sneaking stuff in for her to use, and don't try to hack into the ankle monitor or anything else. I know who you are, and you're not as good as you think. Remember when your systems got hacked a few weeks back?" As the sneer on her face wilted, he said, "Yeah, that was us, the dipshits."

"Who is she, Parker? Helena's given us the impression she's some waif off the streets she's taken in." Myka glared at Helena, who was gently feeling the band around her leg.

"She does security systems, home, Internet, that sort of thing. Mainly consumers but she's taken on a few small businesses as well. We've kept an eye on her because of her brother, but when we knew Ms. Wells had reached a deal with us, let's just say we became more interested in Claudia's activities. A few of us decided to test her a little, see what kind of threat she posed." With a quick jerk of his head, he indicated his opinion of her threat level. "Her biggest weapon is that mouth of hers."

"Screw you, Dudley Do-Right," Claudia muttered. "If you think I can't hand your ass to you -"

"Claudia," Helena said sharply. "She won't be trying anything," she said, her eyes touching on Parker, Myka, and Steve in turn. "She's been my friend for years, and she's exceedingly loyal. But she knows what's at stake."

With a push of a military-issue boot against the doorframe, Claudia was out of the apartment, yelling, "I'll get back with you later, Helena, once the air clears."

The sounds of Claudia's angry stomping down the stairs filled the living room. Mrs. Frederic smoothed her skirt, saying to Helena, "You saw the boxes in the extra bedroom?" At her nod, Mrs. Frederic said, "Claudia said your mother had your other things." Over the rims of her half-glasses, she gave Myka and Steve a quick, searching look. "I imagine you'll want to look at them. Claudia's already taken a few items out."

"Parker," Myka began, but Helena interrupted her.

"You. If someone's going to go through my private things, I want it to be you." She leaned against the back of the sofa. "I can stand your grubby paws, Myka, no one else's. What little privacy I can cling to, I will."

Mrs. Frederic was rising, digging deep into the pocket of her skirt. She brought out two small key rings, walking to the sofa and leaning over its arm to place one in Helena's palm. She gave the other to Myka, who was standing next to Steve. They had taken positions just inside the living room, although Helena was hardly a candidate to bolt. "The larger is the key to the outer door." She patted Steve's arm. "I'm out of extra sets, but I'm assuming you can share with Agent Bering." Pausing on the threshold of the apartment door, she smiled at the both of them, while her eyes remained alert and unsmiling. "I imagine you don't want me around for the rest of this. But I'll be downstairs if you need me, with some extra cinnamon rolls." Of the four of them, Parker was the most visibly appreciative, unconsciously rubbing his stomach.

Myka wasn't sure how much attention Helena paid to Parker's ad hoc but painstaking tutorial on the laptop and phone. How she needed to sign in and use a password, how certain sites, certain numbers were automatically blocked, how, periodically, Myka or Steve would ask for the laptop and phone for data dumps. Dark eyes were barely visible under heavy lids by the time Parker wound down. He took out a few power cords and a wireless mouse from the grocery sack and laid them on the coffee table.

Steve went over the agency's expectations, those that had been written into the agreement and those that were unwritten but just as binding. Unless otherwise scheduled, she was expected to show up at the agency's offices by 8:00 a.m. How she got there was up to her, although transportation costs came out of her stipend. There wouldn't be a separate allowance. Although her monitor wouldn't transmit alarms so long as she remained with the circumscribed area - "How large is this area?" Helena asked and frowned when she received the answer - she was expected to be back in her apartment by 8:00 p.m. every night, unless the team directed her otherwise. And just as her phone and laptop were subject to periodic, unscheduled data dumps, she would be subject to periodic, unscheduled inspections. Visits, really, because the agency was confident that Helena would follow the rules - since there would be no benefit to her in not following them. No need to make the visits any more intrusive than they had to be.

"Unless, of course, I invite someone 'unvetted' here for carnal relations since," Helena gestured to the old-fashioned boxy TV on a stand and to a built-in bookcase holding an assortment of aging paperbacks, "you have to admit, the distractions are not optimal." Her smile was wicked. "Or, conversely, I invite someone 'unvetted' for conversations about the power of forgiveness and finding my purpose in Christ. Mrs. Frederic may be a devout believer, a proper churchgoing lady. Perhaps I'll attend services with her and find my soul uplifted. Maybe I'll be so moved as to want a spiritual advisor. Would you send me back to prison because I broke a rule in trying to become a better person?"

"You're so sure that the church won't collapse on top of you?" Myka said sardonically.

Helena's laughter was harsh and abrupt, more bark than laugh. "Am I really such a sinner in your eyes?"

Myka didn't answer her, checking the time on her phone. "We should get going now to make it to Jemma's by 2:00. Parker, are you done?" At his nod, she glanced at Helena. "Will a sandwich on the way do for lunch?"

"Is it coming out of my stipend?" The sarcasm was blunted by Helena's nervous examination of her jeans and shirt. "Can't do much about these," she fretted. Speaking more loudly but no less sarcastically, "Do I have your permission to freshen up before we leave?" As Steve shook his head in exasperation, she said, "Does one of you have to accompany me to the bathroom? Should I leave the door open?"

"Just hurry up, Helena." Myka shooed Parker out of the apartment. After pointing in the direction of the bathroom to confirm that Myka would bring Helena downstairs, Steve followed Parker.

When Helena returned to the living room, her face was pale and damp. Hair that had gotten wet when she had washed her face was glued to her ears and cheeks. Eyes that had seemed on the verge of rolling back into her head during Parker's mini-lecture and had glinted contemptuously during Steve's summary of the conditions of her release were wide and staring. Myka realized that Helena's desire to freshen up had been more of an excuse to steady herself, maintain her composure. Helena said it had been months since she had seen Christina. Christina was only four, and much had changed for her, a father she had never known had entered her life and a stepmother as well. Christina wouldn't have forgotten her mother, but Helena and Jemma were no longer the only adults in her life or the only ones with a claim to her affection. She had competing interests to manage, and that was a lot to ask of a little girl, no matter how bright and mature for her age she was. Small wonder that Helena might feel some trepidation on seeing her daughter again.

The unwelcome flash of sympathy that she felt for Helena must have shown on her face, because something eased in Helena's eyes; she looked less startled, less likely to fly to the ceiling if someone touched her. She started to hold out her hand, as if she meant for Myka to take it. But as Myka hardened her expression, swearing silently at how the control she had learned at such cost deserted her when Helena looked the least bit vulnerable, the hand dropped back to Helena's side.

"Let's go then," Helena said tonelessly.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Myka expected a residence less modest than the one they were walking up to. The Houston art theft alone should have netted Helena millions, not to mention the scams she must have worked both before and after it. Doubtless she could have afforded something far grander than the Cape Cod style home in front of them, which didn't even have the virtue of being particularly historic. That siding wasn't from the nineteenth century. It was the Wells' trademark, Gentleman Jim's at any rate, to conspicuously consume, daring law enforcement to trace back the flashy cars, the luxurious homes, the expensive accessories to thefts and forgeries he was suspected of committing. But this was a home at which Gentleman Jim wouldn't have looked twice. Not that it wasn't nice, well out on the island, rubbing boundary lines, if not elbows, with much more expensive properties to its east, but it wasn't splashy. Two-story, with a roof that swept down to overhang a front porch, whose steps they were just now climbing, it was what Myka would expect a moderately successful attorney and his or her moderately successful financial manager of a spouse to own. Maybe Helena viewed her father as a counterexample and banked her money instead of spending it. In countries where banking laws were more lax. The door opened, and Myka was surprised that Jemma Wells was alone, no dark-haired little girl at her side. Myka was even more surprised to realize she was disappointed that Christina wasn't with her grandmother. Losing herself in daydreams about mini-Helenas had ended for her long ago.

Jemma was a little grayer, a little rounder than when Myka had last seen her, but her skin was still remarkably unblemished, her complexion just as fair as Myka remembered. The look she gave her daughter was one Myka remembered too, a mixture of affection and wariness, but Jemma was already enfolding Helena in a hug. Although Helena wasn't especially tall, she stooped over her mother, as if she were trying to study the porch's flooring over Jemma's shoulder. With a decisive pat, Jemma ended the embrace and regarded Myka with an unembarrassed wistfulness. "I've often thought about you," she said, leaning forward so dramatically that Myka thought she might be the next recipient of a hug. But if that had been Jemma's intention, she thought better of it, rocking back on her heels and turning her attention to Steve. "You're her partner, I assume. And what do they call you?"

"Steve Jinks," Steve said, "but my friends call me Agent Jinks." He smiled boyishly and shook her hand.

Myka bit her lip in exasperation. Certain older women brought out a joking, teasing quality in him, not quite flirtatious, not quite filial, but in-between. All she needed was for Steve to take a shine to Helena's mother.

Jemma said, almost as coyly, "Then you can call me Mrs. Wells, Agent Jinks."

Helena gave vent to the groan that Myka had been suppressing. "For God's sake, you haven't been married to the man in decades."

Ignoring her, Jemma said, "Just the two of you bringing her by? I wouldn't have been surprised if a SWAT team had been her escort." She cast another affectionately wary glance at Helena. "You're not insulted that they didn't think you more dangerous than that?"

"It might not appear that way, but they have me effectively bound and gagged." Helena followed her mother into the foyer. Stairs to the second floor were on the right, and Helena drifted toward them, gazing up at the landing. Her voice growing sharper, she asked, "Is Christina down for a nap? And why didn't you tell me that Ben was still trying to cut me off from her?"

"Bound, yes, gagged never," Jemma said with a wry glance in Myka's direction.

The foyer opened into a large living room, which, on one side, was bordered by the kitchen and dining room, and, at the opposite end, by a back porch. She waved a hand toward the sofa and chairs that formed a loose U in the center. One of the chairs, oversized and plushly upholstered was clearly Jemma's; a magazine was splayed over one of its arms and the TV remote teetered on the edge of the cushion. A matching ottoman had been drawn close; if she were to sit in the chair, Myka figured her legs would overhang the ottoman by several inches. Coloring books, markers, and a variety of toy zoo animals, differing in sizes and materials, were strewn across the rug.

"Take a seat where you like. I was just starting to tidy up when I heard you on the porch." As Helena bent to pick up a stuffed elephant, Jemma said apologetically. "She's been so excited about you coming home, love, that she's barely slept the past few days. She just collapsed after lunch, practically fell asleep in the middle of eating her sandwich, so I put her to bed. I can wake her up."

"No," Helena said, slumping into another overstuffed chair across from Jemma's. "Let her sleep. I'll wake her up in a little while."

Jemma hovered near the chair. "As for Christina's father, I've been trying to work on him, make him see reason. That's why I didn't say anything. I've been hoping for better news."

Pulling disconsolately at the elephant's trunk, Helena said, "The Winslows aren't compromisers. They've never had to be." With a resurgence of her waspishness, she darted a hostile look at Myka. "Are there limits to how often I can talk to my daughter on the phone?"

"Not that I'm aware of." Myka said calmly.

"I suppose that you'll be listening in. Who knows what skulduggery a four-year-old can get up to? I'm hardly confident, given the FBI's past performance, that you'll be able to outwit a preschooler."

Myka ignored the sarcasm, wandering restlessly near the end of the sofa where Steve was sitting, examining a plush giraffe. "Feel free to rip it open, Agent Jinks. You don't know, I may have hidden some stolen jewels in it," Helena said, brushing the elephant from her lap.

"Helena, keep a civil tongue," Jemma warned. "You don't need to make things more difficult than they are."

Helena shrugged, but as the sounds of someone slowly, very slowly descending the stairs filled the room, she whirled around, her face alight. A little girl, her head barely topping the handrail, was making sure both feet were on the same step before moving down to the next. She uncertainly surveyed the living room. "Nonni?" Her voice quavered.

"Come on, pet," Jemma said briskly. "Your mum came home like I said she would. She just brought some friends with her, that's all." She squeezed her daughter's shoulder as she passed her, continuing to encourage Christina.

Helena got up from the chair to follow Jemma, calling out softly, "Hi, pumpkin. I've missed you so much."

Christina stopped again to take another survey of the room, but Myka and Steve were still there. Steve flashed her a grin and waved hello, but she only stared at him before concentrating on the step below her. She took the last one in a jump, her motion carrying her to her grandmother. She hugged Jemma's knees, burying her head against Jemma's thigh.

"No need to be shy," Jemma gently scolded. "You know your mum, of course, and her friends won't bite you."

Christina turned her face against Jemma's leg just enough so that she could see them, but she didn't move away from her grandmother. She was wearing corduroy overalls over a long-sleeved top patterned in dancing bears. Her hair, as black as Helena's and just as thick, hung past her shoulders, flyaway and pillow-mussed. Jemma's hand, which had automatically started to smooth Christina's hair, stopped and slipped over to her shoulder to give her a tiny push.

"Go say hello to your mum. You were just saying this morning how you were going to give her a hundred kisses when you saw her."

Helena was crouching, arms outstretched. "I'll give you a thousand. And I'll tell you lots and lots of stories just like before."

Myka had never heard Helena sound so indulgent, not without some trace of mockery, and she had never seen her smile with such joy. She hadn't known that the ends of Helena's mouth could climb so high up into her face. But Christina remained at her grandmother's side, and Myka searched for a distraction because as Helena fought to keep her smile wide and bright and relaxed, Myka didn't want to feel sorry for her yet again. On an end table next to Steve, there was a small, fuzzy tiger, seemingly abandoned. It was the kind of cheap toy bought on impulse from a bin in a department store or found inside a Happy Meal. A child would play with it for five minutes and then forget about it. But Myka was no sooner holding it than she heard Christina crying "That's mine!" and running toward her with the apparent intent of ripping it from her hands.

Jemma's disapproving "Christina!" and then her sterner "What have I told you about sharing?" went unheeded; Christina was tugging at Myka's slacks, saying peremptorily "Mine!" and reaching for the tiger.

The color of Christina's eyes was lighter than her mother's, hazel rather than a brown so dark as to be indistinguishable from black, but the look in them, as much challenge as it was demand, was Helena's. Myka knew that one of her big, silly grins was spreading across her face, and she resented it, if only because Helena would see it, but she couldn't help herself, the Wells arrogance, miniaturized, was undeniably cute, and Helena would see that too. Trusting, no, hoping that she was reading Christina right and that what she was going to do wouldn't result in a meltdown, Myka said just as possessively "Mine!" and held the tiger behind her back. Christina's mouth dropped open in surprise, and the brows Myka remembered from the picture of Christina with her father, thicker and more arched than her mother's, dismayingly pulled together, and Myka thought for a moment that she had guessed wrong, that a howl of outrage wouldn't be far behind. Instead, with something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, Christina ran behind her, and Myka switched the toy between her hands and brought it back around as Christina chased it, giggles bubbling and then bursting into shrieks. Holding the toy above Christina's flailing arms, she answered each hiccupped "Mine" with a "Not yet." Just as Christina seemed ready to put an end to the game with a more strident claim of ownership, Myka flipped the tiger across the room to Helena. She hadn't planned to do it, and Helena obviously wasn't expecting to end up with the tiger, knocking it to the rug in a clumsy attempt to catch it. She had been watching the two of them a little enviously, and she met Myka's toss with a puzzled look, unsure whether Myka had meant to throw it to her or at her.

"Go, go get it," Myka urged Christina who, indecisive about what to do next, was almost comically swiveling her head between Myka and Helena. Finally, having made up her mind, she yelled to no one in particular, "Mine," and ran to her mother, ignoring the tiger Helena now held in her hand, burrowing into her chest, as Helena swept her up into her arms.

"All yours." Helena peppered the top of Christina's head with kisses. She looked at Myka and her lips parted as if she were about to say something, but then they closed and she buried them in Christina's hair.

The disciplinarian in Jemma was struggling to maintain a frown, and as Christina tilted her head on Helena's shoulder, smiling smugly at her grandmother, Jemma shook a finger at her, which was enough to start Christina giggling again. Helena's back was turned to the finger-shaking display, but she must have felt the admonition in the air because she turned around, shifting Christina to her hip, and said wearily, "I know she behaved badly, but can we skip the life lesson or time out for once? I have little enough time with her as it is." Summoning a smile for her daughter, she said playfully, "You were encouraged to misbehave, weren't you? Agent Bering doesn't always play by the rules."

Christina understood from the warmth of the tone, if not from the words themselves, that she was in no immediate danger of being punished, and she nodded vigorously. Jemma gave her a kiss on her cheek as she made her way to the kitchen, nudging coloring books and stray markers from her path. "Might as well give her her snack now since she hardly ate anything at lunch." She directed a half-apologetic look at Myka and Steve. "What she has are apple slices and string cheese. Which you're welcome to have as well, if you'd like." Sighing, she rounded the long counter that separated the kitchen from the living room and said over the squeal of the refrigerator door as she opened it, "I gave Helena biscuits and pudding for snacks when she was a child. Apparently I was maltreating her."

Helena laughed easily, lightly, carrying Christina with her into the kitchen. "I always nicked a few candy bars from the store on my way home from school. Didn't you ever wonder why I left the biscuits and pudding untouched?" Stepping around her mother and searching a cupboard for plates, she said, "I'm sure that can't come as a surprise to Agent Bering or Agent Jinks." With Christina still clinging to her, she placed them on the counter and asked Myka and Steve innocently, "Water, milk, or juice?"

"Juice," Christina said, "Juice, please," with special emphasis on the 'please.' She looked at Myka smugly, as if to let her know that she could remember her manners when she wanted to.

Steve caught Myka's eye and wiggled his phone. "We need to check in. I'll do it." He held the giraffe up for Christina to view, and once she focused on it, he made a great display of releasing it on the sofa cushion. "I get it, it's yours." He smiled. "Save some apple slices for me."

Myka couldn't remember what after-school treats her mother would have made for her, probably because there hadn't been any - her father didn't approve of snacks. Maybe as a result, she wasn't much for snacking, and apples, in any event, weren't among her favorite foods, but she was hungry. Helena had offered to split her sandwich with her on the ride over, but Myka had declined the offer. It hadn't made sense because she wasn't going to ask for part of Steve's jalapẽno-loaded sandwich, but she couldn't force herself to accept food from Helena's hand. There would be no intimacy to it, she knew that, one-half of a chicken salad sandwich passed from the back seat to the front. But she couldn't do it. Yet somehow sitting at the counter with Helena, her daughter, and her mother, and eating apple slices and string cheese with them was all right. She concentrated on pulling a string of cheese down and off a perfect factory-cut cylinder. Probably factory-made cheese as well. In fact, Jemma wasn't eating the cheese, claiming that it was like eating rubber bands.

Watching Helena with her daughter, Myka realized that whatever doubts she had about Helena's capacity for loving someone, anyone, were gone. Helena's ability to love someone other than her child might be limited, but she loved Christina whole-heartedly. The anger and anxiety that had added lines to her face and an edge to her voice had vanished. As she giggled with Christina as they made string cheese mustaches that they held to each other's mouth, Helena looked as she had when Myka first met her, confident, relaxed, playful. And Myka felt just as tense and wound up now as she had then.

"You do it," Christina said to her. She flattened a piece of cheese against her upper lip. "Like this, see?"

Myka wasn't sure how much she wanted to, or should, continue to indulge her. There was a boundary that needed to be observed. She wasn't Helena's friend or relative. She was Helena's jailer. On the other hand, she was going to be a part of Helena and Christina's Sunday afternoon visits for God knew how long, and she should establish some rapport with the child. So she smiled and pulled several long, thin strands of cheese and held them above her lips, forming a droopy handlebar mustache that she thought made her look like Yosemite Sam.

Christina laughed. "You're silly," she declared. "Isn't she, Mommy?"

"Right now, very much so," Helena agreed quietly, and Myka saw something in those dark eyes that might have been softer than anger, but she let her own glance slide away.

Myka bent her head and let her mustache drop to her plate. Darting her hand across the counter, Christina stole some cheese from Myka's plate. There was nothing soft in those eyes, only another challenge, and Myka snaked her arm across the counter and stole a piece of Christina's apple. As Christina yelped in mock outrage, Jemma brought the competition to an end by removing Christina's plate.

"When you start playing more with your food than eating it, I know you're done," she said, taking the plate to the sink. Returning to the counter, she suggested to Helena, "Why don't you take Christina upstairs and try to have her lie down? I don't read to her nearly as well as you do. That's what she tells me, anyway."

Helena looked inquiringly at Myka. "Do you trust that I won't try to escape through the bedroom window? Or do you need to be with me every minute?" The mockery had returned, but there was no especial bite to it.

"I'm not going to begrudge you some time alone with your daughter," Myka said. "Besides, where are you going to go with the monitor on you?"

"Good point." As Christina slid off her chair, Helena held out her hand to her. As they walked toward the stairs, Helena would point to the various animals on the floor and ask if Christina wanted to take them to nap with her. By the time they reached the bottom of the steps, Christina had an armful, and Helena looked over her shoulder, not at Jemma but at Myka, and shrugged helplessly.

Myka turned her attention back to her plate and the lone Lincoln Log of mozzarella that remained. She picked at it slowly as Jemma put the few dishes into the dishwasher and swept leftover apple into the disposal.

"I've thought about you over the years," Jemma said, squeezing the excess water out of a sponge and wiping the counters around the sink. "Wondered if you found someone else, if you had children, if you were happy. Are you married? Do you have children?"

Myka appreciated the awkwardness of their situation. When she had been involved with Helena, they had had dinner with Jemma a few times and there had been the occasional visit,when mother or daughter felt a need to check in, pick up an item, drop off a present, but she had seen Jemma no more often than that. Yet she had always sensed that Jemma liked her, approved of their relationship. Still. . . still, did every woman roughly Myka's mother's age assume that her happiness depended on having someone in her life and/or children?

"Married briefly, no children," she said politely but not encouragingly.

"I know, you're thinking I'm from the dark ages to ask you that, but, clearly, you're still with the FBI. Yet I can hardly believe you're happy with your job right now, having to babysit my daughter. Asking about significant others and babies seemed safer." She smiled ruefully at Myka. Her expression altered, growing serious, intent. "I sent her upstairs, you know, to have a moment alone with you. She doesn't want anyone to plead her case for her, and you're not going to be easy to convince, but she's not the same person she was. She's changed, Myka, she really has. Whatever she's agreed to do for you, she'll do it. There's nothing up her sleeve this time."

Myka resume picking at the cheese, but it had become warm and soft and stuck to her fingers. She bit back a sigh and wiped her hands on her napkin. Bringing her plate over to Jemma and looking for a wastebasket in which to dump the string cheese, Myka said, "You're right, I'm not going to be easy to convince, nor is anyone else at the agency. She has a lot to make up for, and there's no margin for her, Jemma, none at all."

Jemma nodded, betraying no disappointment. With a slight hitch of her shoulders, as if she were resettling a weight that she had been carrying for a while, which Myka supposed she had been, Helena's betrayal of the agency and subsequent flight a shock to her as much as to the agents, she took Myka's plate and set it in the sink. She popped the cheese into a wastebasket underneath the sink muttering, "Oh, that's nasty when it's warm." Washing her hands, she said over the stream of water, "She has reason now, to be a better person, than she did then."

_Pete was asking the questions. They hadn't talked about who was going to take the lead when the doorman or the security guard or whoever it was behind the desk had buzzed Jemma's apartment to let her know that the FBI were here to see her, but when the security locks released and she and Pete were riding the elevator to an upper level, Pete had taken one look at her and said, "I've got this, Mykes."_

_Jemma recovered from the news quickly, the closed eyes rapidly fluttering open and the slackness that had entered her face gone, her jaw setting like stone and her mouth compressing into a bloodless line. Within seconds, she had gone from fearing that the two FBI agents in her home were there to tell her that something terrible had happened to her only child to realizing that they were there to tell her that her only child had done something terrible. It wasn't resistance that Myka sensed in her as much as retreat. This wasn't the first time that the authorities had come calling on Jemma Wells about a member of her family. She may not have had the longest marriage to Jim Wells, but it had been an eventful one._

_Pete had sensed it too, probably more readily because he hadn't even bothered to take out his notepad. He knew what her answers would be._

_No, she didn't know where Helena was. She hadn't spoken to her daughter in over a week._

_No, she didn't know anything about the Marston Gallery in Houston, other than what was in the papers, and she didn't know David or Hilary Marston._

_No, Helena had never mentioned the Marston family to her._

_No, she didn't know if Helena had been in contact with her father or brother._

_No, she hadn't been in contact with Jim Wells and she had even less reason to be in contact with his son._

_And so it went on, all morning it seemed to Myka, although when she checked her watch, she was surprised to learn that she and Pete had been in Jemma's apartment for less than an hour. Pete asked some questions more than once, rephrasing them to see if he could elicit a different response, but Jemma's No's were nails being pounded into Myka's head, long, blunt nails being pounded by a sledgehammer. Eventually Pete stopped, but Myka had had to ask Jemma for a glass of water so she could down enough ibuprofen to stop the throbbing - and to shred her stomach lining. As Jemma led them to the door, registering no emotion when Pete said that they would want to talk with her again, she held Myka back, clutching her elbow. After giving Myka a twitch of his mouth that Myka knew meant he would wait for her in the hallway, Pete thanked Jemma for her time._

" _She'll regret this. I know how much she cares for you, even if she's too blind to see it herself."_

_With a harshness, a rudeness, that sounded very strange and very good to her at the same time, Myka said, "If you're being honest with me, then you obviously don't know a damn thing about her. And if you're not, keep your lies to yourself. No one is going to regret any of this more than I do." But the pleasure of being rude faded almost immediately, Jemma had been offering her the only comfort she could. "I'm sorry," Myka said, lurching out of the apartment in her hurry to get away. "I'm sorry."_

_In the car, Pete suggested, in all seriousness, that her headaches might disappear if she just let herself fucking cry about the whole thing. As he handed her a Wendy's napkin from the dashboard to use as a tissue, she stared at him and then punched him in the shoulder. Hard._

_Or, he said, she could go on inappropriately directing all that rage at others. Her choice. But he had only two shoulders._

"She has Christina, yes," Myka said impatiently. She sucked in a long breath, offering an apologetic smile of her own to Jemma. "But having her didn't stop Helena from pulling a securities scam. Which seems all the more ridiculous when she had. . . this." Myka waved her arm at the living room, trying to suggest the financial resources that made the home - modest only in comparison with the immodest homes surrounding it - possible. "Why would she be so greedy or so cocky as to risk her freedom on a con that was outside her field of expertise?"

"It's complicated," Jemma said hesitantly. "It's not what you think it is. But it's Helena's story to tell, if she wants to tell it."

Myka raised an eyebrow in disbelief but didn't press her. She glanced toward the porch, which was where Steve had gone to call the office. Usually calls to Pete didn't last this long. She wondered if something had gone wrong already, and while part of her anticipated the relief she would feel at having this devil's bargain they had struck with Helena scuttled, she couldn't help but look up toward the second floor, where Helena was trying to settle Christina down for a nap. It was always possible that Helena was trying to remove her ankle monitor or estimating the jump from a second floor window to the ground, but Myka believed she was reading to her daughter or talking to her about her day. Christina was a handful, but she was a cute handful, and Myka didn't like the image that flashed through her mind of a four-year-old sobbing because her mother had been taken away from her yet again.

"Christina wouldn't have been possible without you," Jemma said suddenly.

The sound of Jemma's voice breaking the quiet, the fact that they had both been thinking about Christina startled Myka, and she stared at Jemma blankly, unable to decipher her logic. "I can't work that one out," she said after a long pause.

Myka felt pinned by how intently Jemma was looking at her. "I think you can, if you want to."

The front door opened, and Steve was pocketing his phone, his expression vaguely inquiring as he glanced at Myka. She shook her head. As he came closer, he murmured, "Sorry, I took so long. We're going to have provide blow-by-blows of our time with her apparently." Letting his tone become more casual, he said, "And there was a message from Paul I had to respond to." Slipping onto one of the chairs at the counter, he smiled brightly at Jemma. "Am I too late for a snack?"

Myka tuned out the easy chatter Steve and Jemma fell into as she checked her phone and found herself, more than once, running her eyes up the stairs. She didn't need to look in on Helena, and they weren't short on time. Helena could squeeze in a few more fairy tales if that was what Christina liked. But despite the reasons she had marshaled against going upstairs, she was soon going up the stairs, feeling foolish and intrusive and defensive all at once. A playroom was on the right and bedrooms were farther down the hall. The door to one was open, and she could hear Helena talking softly to her daughter. She had forgotten that Helena could sound like that, low and intimate and smiling even when she wasn't smiling. She spun around, ready to leap the stairs, if need be, to the first floor, when Helena called out, "You can quit lurking, Myka, she's not asleep."

It was the kind of room her sister Tracy had always wanted for herself when they were growing up. From the design magazines that never sold in their father's bookstore, she would tear out pictures of bedrooms that displayed "the perfect look for your little princess's room," canopy beds with frilly bedspreads, dressers in candy cotton pink or lilac, miniature make-up tables, murals of kittens and puppies and ponies painted on the walls. Christina's little-girl furniture was pale blue and yellow and pink. While she had no canopy bed, her comforter and sheets displayed Disney princesses, and in a corner of the room was a large doll house, a painstakingly detailed replica of a turn-of-the-century Victorian home. A far cry from what Tracy had had to make do with, a narrow room in which were crammed two twin beds and a second-hand dresser shared with Myka.

Christina was barely visible among the stuffed animals that crowded her pillows. But as Helena had said, she wasn't asleep, giggling as Myka surveyed the room. "You again," she said gaily.

"Myka," Myka said, leaning against the dresser and jostling a music box that started playing "Let It Go" until she promptly opened and closed the lid.

"Myka," Christina repeated. "My-KA!"

"Shshsh." Helena was stretched on the bed beside her daughter. "Nonni thinks you're napping." She fussed with one of the animals, a stuffed elephant, placing it closer within reach of Christina's arm.

"Naps are boring," Christina declared, although she yawned widely in the middle of her objection.

"Most things that are good for us are boring, pumpkin. It's a fact of life that you'll have to get used to." Helena slanted Myka a sardonic look.

Christina didn't miss it, following the direction of her mother's gaze. "Is My-ka good?" She whisper-stressed the 'ka.' "Is Myka boring?"

"Yes, she's a good thing. . . but not boring." Helena's smile was all the more wicked for being just the faintest upturn of her lips.

Myka ignored it. "We need to keep an eye on the time."

Helena sighed theatrically. "Not boring but occasionally irritating." At Christina's sleepy frown, she said, "But still very, very good."

Christina turned on her side and drew the sheet up to her chin. "Just a while longer, Mommy."

"I'll be down soon," Helena said quietly to Myka. "No need to patrol the hallway." She gestured to the windows on either side of the bed. "See? They're both locked." As Myka's mouth thinned in exasperation, she added in mock complaint, "I can never please you. If I try to escape, you're unhappy, and if I don't try to escape, you're unhappy."

"Four o'clock, Helena."

Helena tilted her head toward the Disney clock on the nightstand. "Belle will let me know when it's time."

Myka left her humming softly to Christina. At the bottom of the stairs, close to the door, were two large suitcases. Steve hopped down from his chair at the counter with what looked like a peanut butter sandwich in his hand. He had scored peanut butter. And jelly. "Jemma had me bring these from Helena's bedroom." Pointing toward the far corner of the living room where there was a truncated hallway that suggested another room, he said, "You ought to check it out. Pretty nice, opens onto the back porch." He took a bite of his sandwich. "The suitcases have some of her clothes,the ones Jemma thought she'd wear to the office." He had graduated to peanut butter and jelly and calling her Jemma, in what, fifteen minutes? Myka resisted the temptation to look at her watch. "Better you than me going through her underwear." Steve took another bite, pushing it to the side of his mouth. In a stage whisper, he said, "On second thought, she seems the type to go commando."

When Helena came down from Christina's room, the wicked smile and the mocking edge had disappeared. She was subdued, listless, and her eyes were red-rimmed. She wanly cautioned Jemma not to let Christina sleep too long, but Jemma brushed the advice aside and hugged her, telling her, as if Helena were one more four-year-old she had to comfort, that Sunday wasn't far off and, in the meantime, there was always the telephone. "Cell phone, smart phone, whatever they call it these days," she amended. "Doesn't matter, Christina takes to it like she was sixteen years old."

Jemma's smile was the too wide kind, having to be big and bright enough to drag all those with her to a happy place without dimming. Helena didn't resist when her mother tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, as she hadn't resisted the hug, but her "Thank you, Jemma" was cool, and Myka was reminded when she heard Helena say her mother's name that it was always Jemma with her, as though her mother was no different from anyone else, just another mark for the fleecing.

Myka wondered how much Christina had changed Helena's perception of how the world worked. The only law, written or unwritten, was that everyone would be played. Your only hope was to con as many people as you could before someone bigger, shrewder, and more ruthless conned you. How would Christina survive in such a world, with her doting nonnie and Disney princesses for whom everything turned out all right in the end? Maybe Helena was no more immune than most (but not all) parents to the conviction that their children were different from the rest, that they were special. There were marks and there was Christina. If Helena could conceive of one person who wouldn't be a victim or a fool, maybe she had changed. All Myka knew was that growing up thinking you weren't special didn't make you any less vulnerable. It made you only the more incautious. . . .

Helena just as listlessly followed her and Steve to the car, sliding over on the backseat and mechanically buckling her seatbelt as Steve put her suitcases in the trunk. Myka looked at Christina's bedroom windows thinking she might see her looking down at them, but the windows stared back blankly at her. She risked a glance at Helena and saw that her head was bent, her eyes fixed on the hands in her lap, the same posture she had adopted when they left the prison. Worrying her lip because she knew she would probably regret what she was about to say, she said it anyway. "I know it's tough to leave her and the Sunday visits aren't what you hoped for, but if you want to set up outings for Christina on those days, we're flexible -"

Helena lifted her head to glare at Myka. "You have no idea what I'm feeling, and unless this is some incredibly inept beginning to an interrogation, I'd prefer not to talk."

Yup, she shouldn't have said anything. Myka heard the door to the trunk slam, and then Steve settled in next to her. After looking at the two of them, he said with forced cheerfulness, "Anybody object to listening to NPR?" The drive back to the city seemed longer than normal, Helena's brooding presence in the back seat a weight that kept the car to a crawl, although repeated checks of the speed dial told Myka that she was driving faster than the speed limit. Before they veered north to take a circuitous route of expressways and multi-lane streets, which were expressways in all but name, to Mrs. Frederic's home, Myka dropped Steve off at a subway station to catch a train to the office. "Have fun," he said, sending Myka a wryly sympathetic glance before darting to the stairs.

She expected to pass the rest of the drive in silence, relative silence since the host of some NPR program continued to murmur soothingly from the radio, so she started going over the list of all that she needed to do before she could go home. . . or to Sam's. It was always a last-minute decision to go to Sam's, or for him to come to her place. It was what saved them from having to label whatever it was they were to each other now, but she sensed that he wouldn't mind labeling it or if she showed up at his apartment before 11:00 p.m. He wouldn't mind, but that was the problem -

"Most us in the prison were mothers," Helena said, as weary as if she had been subjected to an interrogation the entire time she had been in the car. "We had that in common, if nothing else, and we lived for the days when our kids visited. The prison didn't scare Christina, the prisoners didn't frighten her either. They were always telling her what a pretty girl she was, and she ate it up. The waiting, the endless rules, the guards, it was part of the game of Find Mommy. She always won because she always found me, no matter how long it took." Her voice altered, still weary but rueful, too. "I knew Ben had learned that he was her father, but it never occurred to me. . . . It had been one night, one drunken night, and we hadn't liked each other all that much in the first place. I never told him, in part because I thought he would believe it was only another scam but mainly because he wasn't someone I wanted to share her with. . . . He wasn't the one I imagined I could, that Christina and I could. . . ." She trailed off, and though she had briefly met Myka's gaze in the rear view mirror, she dropped her eyes once more to her lap. "Six months into my sentence, Christina wasn't coming to the prison with Jemma any longer, and Ben was suing for custody. He had managed to scrape up enough therapists saying that visiting me was a traumatic experience for Christina that he had persuaded a judge to prohibit any further visits. I was allowed to talk with her on the phone, but it was far from ideal. When I could call, she was usually asleep." She blew out her breath in one long aggravated exhalation. "Why should I be grateful that I was able to be with her for a couple of hours today and have Sunday afternoons with her? I'm her mother, I shouldn't have to beg for time with her." The head shot up again and the eyes were bright with resentment. "So, if you and Agent Sunshine expect me to fall all over myself with gratitude that I'm able to see her in the little time that Ben has grudgingly carved out for me, sorry to disappoint you."

It was on the tip of Myka's tongue to tell her that gratitude was the last thing she expected from her, but she didn't want them snarling at each other - at least any more than they had been - before Helena had to witness her going through her boxes and suitcases. One of them needed to be the adult, and she was the professional. She was expected to weather the bad temper, the sullenness, the outrageous denials, and the self-pitying excuses of the criminals the agency apprehended - and those they worked with. If, over eight years ago, she had tolerated the Helena who could be arrogant rather than confident, reckless rather than relaxed, and cutting rather than playful, she could endure the Helena she was forced to reckon with now, one alternately hostile and withdrawn. Much of Helena's anger she could attribute to the vise that the FBI, Justice, and Ben Winslow held her in, but there was something behind the anger, as if there were some wound she was trying to hide or protect. It was that Helena who worried her in a way that the con artist and trickster didn't. It wasn't Helena's playfulness or confidence, the improvisational air about her that suggested she had just pulled everything together moments before, which had caught Myka off guard so long ago but the vulnerability underneath it. It was that Helena who had nearly done her in, who had seduced her, not through some prowess, sexual or professional, but the ability to make her believe, despite what her father had told her, that she was special, different from all the rest. Myka wasn't sure she could survive being lied to like that again.

She was rough with the suitcases, yanking them out of the trunk and slamming them on the pavement. She handed one to Helena, without saying anything, and then strode up the walk to Mrs. Frederic's brownstone. The house seemed empty when they entered it, but Myka wouldn't have been surprised to see Mrs. Frederic quietly emerge from one of the shadowed hallways that led away from the living room. She suspected that Mrs. Frederic did many things quietly, watchfully, but as she followed Helena up the two flights of stairs, she caught no glimpse of artfully braided hair or the vented back of a suit jacket.

"Another day, another prison cell," Helena said as she unlocked the apartment door and, with a mocking flourish, indicated that Myka should precede her. On the dining table was a cellophane wrapped plate of cookies and a card. Helena dropped her suitcase by the sofa and, with only a mildly interested glance at the cookies, opened the card and read it. She smiled and then disappeared into the small kitchen. Myka heard the popping of the seal as Helena opened the refrigerator door, and when she came into the kitchen, big enough to hold the refrigerator, a combination stove/microwave, and a few cabinets above and below the sink, she saw Tupperware containers and a half-gallon of milk on the refrigerator's shelves. In the freezer were more Tupperware containers, neatly labeled.

"She calls them apartment-warming gifts. Is the FBI going to make me give them back or repay her, from what I expect is my very slender stipend, for fear that I've unduly influenced her?"

"I doubt she's that easily influenced." Curious, Myka pulled out one of the Tupperware containers from the freezer. Spaghetti and meatballs.

Her stomach growled, and Helena grinned, not completely maliciously. "I'd invite you to stay for dinner, but I'm not in the mood for company. Certainly not that of my guard. But you're welcome to take one with you, unless you've learned to cook. Did you have to, for the Neanderthal?"

Myka ignored her, putting the container back. She retrieved the suitcases and, with them banging not so gently against her legs, took them into the larger of the two bedrooms. It was plainly furnished, a double bed, a nightstand, a dresser. Someone had already made the bed, and one of the boxes on the floor had been opened. On the nightstand were a clock and a framed picture of Christina. There were other pictures of Christina, some with Helena and Jemma, on the dresser. She checked the dresser drawers, empty except for a few blocks of cedar, and the closet, which revealed only hangers on a rod. Feeling stupid, she got down on her hands and knees and checked under the bed, nothing there. She pulled the already-open box closer to her and began to remove its contents. Books and sketchpads and drawing pencils. She flipped through the books and pads, shook them briefly, before setting them aside. Sensing that she was being observed, she looked over her shoulder and saw Helena in the doorway. Helena was watching her, but her expression was impassive, and Myka wondered just how many cell checks she had been subjected to.

Myka moved on to the next box, which contained a few towels and washcloths, bottles of shampoo and conditioner, toothpaste, a make-up case, and, very well wrapped, a vibrator. Helena laughed when she saw it, although Myka knew that her own face was burning. "I can always count on Claudia to provide the necessities. You can put that in the nightstand drawer, Agent Bering."

Myka tossed it on the bed. "I'm only searching your things, not putting them away for you." She knew that Helena had said it simply to provoke her, and she had let her embarrassment push her into the most flat-footed of responses. She sorted through the rest of the items in the box quickly and leaned over to the tug the last box closer to her.

"Can you go through the suitcases instead? I'd like to start hanging up a few things."

Helena squatted next to her as Myka laid one of the suitcases on the floor and unzipped it. Great, this was the one that had her underwear and bras. Knowing that her face was still red, Myka ran her hand underneath the clothing, feeling through the compartment's lining and discovering nothing. After a quick search of the pockets, she stood up and let Helena empty the suitcase, swiftly but messily pushing the clothing into the dresser drawers. The second suitcase held an assortment of slacks and blazers and blouses, and Myka religiously ran her hand in every pocket, her skin shrinking under Helena's mocking gaze. As Helena shook out the slacks and jackets, Myka nudged the third box across the floor to join the other two. She pried off the tape and pulled back the flaps and then stared at the single item the box contained. It was nestled deep within the packing. It had been damaged, but not by its transport in this box. Instructions in handwriting that wasn't Helena's had noted that the box was to be carried "This Side Up!" and that nothing was to be placed on top of it. It had likely been damaged years ago when she had left Helena's loft for the last time, not taking anything with her, not her books, not her clothes, and certainly not this, and left all to be searched, and ultimately disposed of, by the agency.

She carefully lifted it out and placed it on the floor. It was smaller than she remembered it being, and several of the more delicate metal pieces had been bent. Helena was a painter, not a sculptor, but she had made it for her.

" _It's more of a study for a work than a completed work, but once I had the idea in my head, I couldn't get rid of it. And then you're always complaining about how I never tell you that I love you, and I thought what better than a Helena Wells original, although the critics would say that it's a contradiction in terms. I'll have you know that I don't create things for just anyone, it's not like I'm making macramé plant holders, for Christ's sake, but you're different. Don't you know that by now?" Her voice, teasing, filled with mock exasperation, but anxious, too, seeking her approval._

"It showed up on an auction site, a little worse for wear. I don't even remember what I was looking for, but I saw it and knew I had to put in a bid." Her voice now flat, threaded through with something like anger because it was hard and corrosive like anger but not hot like anger, not anything like the rage that was consuming Myka the longer she stared at the sculpture.

" _I remembered you telling me that you used to fence, and I thought it was such the perfect sport for you because it's all about defending yourself, isn't it? Not letting anything get through. . . ." Her voice was becoming silky, suggestive, but holding onto a faint, uncertain note. "But I got through, didn't I? And you think I'm the one who gives nothing away. So, anyway, I was reading up on fencing. Yes I was, don't look so surprised, and the word 'dérobement' got my attention because it sounds similar to disrobing, and we do plenty of that. . . and everything fell into place."_

"I paid more than I expected to, more than I wanted to, really, because it is pretty beat up. But, after Houston, 'Helena Wells' developed a bit of a cachet to it, nothing like owning an artwork produced by someone suspected of a major crime. Even the critics were nicer. Suddenly I didn't seem so derivative or one-note or superficial. I had no illusions that you would keep it, not after everything that had happened, but I expected you to burn it or weight it with stones and throw it into the ocean, something more dramatic than selling it for whatever you could get at the time." Her words were tumbling out faster, she was expecting a response but not getting one. Unbelievably, her last words sounded injured, as if it pained her to think that Myka had been so mercenary as to sell the piece.

"See _the different colors and textures of the metal? I wanted to suggest two figures and swords and clothing being shredded without being too representational because, well, it's boring, for one thing, and far beyond my metal-working skills for another. But they're us, we're both fighting off and seducing the other, because that's what we did for so long, what we still sometimes do. I think I'd like to present this on a much bigger scale, get some canvas and paint in there, maybe an actual robe - that would get the critics all vomiting, I'm sure - I'm still trying to work through the idea." The voice excited, absorbed by the vision, and Myka listening and watching Helena point out various parts of the work, liking the play of light on the metal and how it did suggest the glinting of foils as well as the shimmering of Helena's lingerie. She didn't know if it was good, she didn't care, Helena had made it for her._   _That was all that mattered._

"Now that I'm a felon, I imagine my prices will keep appreciating. Christina's college education is assured. Who knows what I may get for this if I hang onto it long enough?" The pace of Helena's voice had slowed, and the hard edge to it was no longer corrosive but mocking.

Myka dragged her eyes away from the sculpture and she pushed her hands through the packing in the box, sifting it, rubbing it, turning it over. Nothing. She needed to see what was in the other bedroom. She needed to get out of this one before she murdered Helena. Helena was standing by the dresser and she was smiling, an odd, crumpled twist of a smile but a smile. Her eyes were too bright, as if she were on the verge of crying, but Myka didn't care about what was prompting the tears. Shame, regret, it didn't matter.

"I couldn't touch it," she said evenly. "After Houston, I couldn't touch anything you had touched. Other agents searched your place, and after they didn't find anything, they probably left it to a property management firm to come in and take care of everything. My guess is a mover took it and sold it."

The other bedroom was empty, but Myka stood in it for a long time. Until she could no longer see the sculpture or see her hands around Helena's neck. She could hear Helena moving around in her bedroom, but she didn't go back in. She completed a cursory inventory of the bathroom and then she waited in the living room for Helena to join her. She didn't even look into the bedroom as she passed it.

She hadn't sat down, and she moved closer to the door when Helena entered the room. "I suppose now is the time I should tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you, but I don't think you want to hear it." There was no remorse, no contrition in her tone, just more of that hard, angry flatness.

"You're right, I don't want to hear it. If you're truly sorry, Helena, just do the work we've released you to do." Myka fumbled for the door knob behind her, not sure why she didn't turn around, turn her back on Helena. Did she really believe that Helena would grab a steak knife from the kitchen and attack her?

"That's it? Then all will be forgiven?" Still hard, still flat but more derisive than angry.

"I would hear you at night, when you thought I was asleep, whispering that you loved me." Helena blinked, confusion and surprise overtaking her expression. "I knew then that something was going on, something wasn't right, but I couldn't stop myself. I wanted to believe that you meant it, so I did." Myka shrugged. "You're not the one I can't forgive." As Helena struggled to say something, Myka waved her attempts away. It didn't matter, whatever it was Helena thought she wanted to say. "We'll be expecting you at eight tomorrow morning."

Softly, she shut the door behind her.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I wasn't planning to update this fic for another week, but the chapter was going to be ginormous if I didn't insert a break somewhere. I apologize for the exposition fairy that may be at work in some places, but I thought a few explanations seemed to be in order. Although you know that this is just coming out of my head, right? It's not as though this has any relationship to the way art conservation/restoration, law enforcement agencies, or crime networks work in the real world. If some of it sounds plausible for a millisecond, that's all I can hope for. I'll start upping the B&W. . . warmth. . . a little bit in the next chapter, but we have a long way to go.

"She seems to be working out so far" was Leena's cautious assessment over a shared lunch, one that she had brought because Myka didn't bring lunches - when she remembered to have one - she ordered off the vending machine menu.

"You talk as though she's an au pair, or a puppy." Myka dipped a pita chip into the homemade hummus. Leena did things like that; she cooked, she entertained, she attended cultural events with friends. She wasn't the kind of woman you brought home to meet your parents, although she was, of course. She was the kind of woman your parents, their friends, your high-school Latin teacher, everyone, urged you to meet. Myka had met her a couple of years too late, that was all. After Sam. . . and Helena.

They were outside in a courtyard of sorts, formed by a four-square of virtually identical office towers, including their own, and the people sitting on benches were almost as indistinguishable. Everyone sported a badge, wore the same wrinkle-resistant shirts and casual slacks, and read the latest headlines or texted on their phones. Myka was convinced that she and Leena were the only two sitting close together who were actually talking to each other. It was well past noon, and Leena would have already eaten her lunch, like normal people did, but she always brought extra food on the rare day when she and Myka managed to sync their schedules so as to take a half-hour together. She was familiar with Myka's eating habits, or absence thereof, just as she was familiar with a lot of things about Myka that Myka sometimes wished she wasn't.

"I admit it's early days, but I'm an optimist. She's helped the team close two cases in two weeks." Leena pushed the bag of pita chips and Tupperware container of hummus closer to Myka. "Here, you're feeding those dark thoughts of yours."

"No darker than normal," Myka muttered defensively, taking another pita chip.

"That they're dark at all is the problem." Leena had assumed her gently admonishing therapist look, which was appropriate, the therapist part anyway, since that was part of what she did. She provided counseling to agents for job-related issues. Her other responsibilities were more broad-based; she developed psych profiles of suspects and perpetrators, she evaluated team interactions and recommended changes when necessary, and she developed interrogation techniques. She also was available for ad-hoc assignments whose purposes were deliberately ill-defined, such as her recent assignment to Pete's team. Myka wondered if Leena was "working" with them to observe Helena or to observe her.

"She did this the last time, too," Myka said. "Swept in and closed cases that we hadn't been able to put to bed. Spotted the giveaways in the forgeries that we had missed, found connections between swindles that we had overlooked. And then, just as we might have been getting suspicious that we weren't getting any of the big fish we thought she'd land us, she reeled a few in. They just happened to be competitors of her father, but who's counting? The last twelve months she didn't help out on as many cases." Myka laughed soundlessly. "More of her own work she had to attend to, she said. Various art restoration projects. But I didn't care because I was spending every minute I wasn't working with her. I didn't care where I saw her, in the office or out of it, as long as I saw her. . . ." Myka had breaking off little pieces from a pita chip as she spoke. When she stopped, she looked down at her lap and saw a pile of fragments. She impatiently brushed them from her legs.

"You think she was planning the art heist at the Marston Gallery in Houston then, don't you?" Leena was carefully not looking at her, choosing instead to tilt her head and bathe her face in the attenuated rays of the sun.

"She had been planning it long before then. In fact, that's why she offered her services as a consultant. She needed to know how we operated, how we thought." Myka glanced enviously at how still Leena sat, how her lips curved in a smile as she closed her eyes against the sunlight. It seemed to make little difference to Leena whether she was enjoying a few minutes of a spring afternoon outside the agency's offices or in a lounge chair on her apartment balcony. She enjoyed the moment no matter what brought it about, which was a talent that wholly eluded Myka.

"And you think you were part of her plan," Leena said, not opening her eyes.

"Yes. . . maybe, I'm not sure anymore," Myka admitted. She hated the uncertainty that had entered her voice. It suggested, somehow, that what had happened eight years ago wasn't completely over, if only in her own mind, that she might revisit it to find a different answer, one that would tell her she hadn't been Helena's fool. It was much easier, and safer, to believe that than to believe that she had been Helena's mistake, her one misstep. Hardening her voice, she said, "It doesn't matter now."

"Actually, it does," Leena disagreed. She opened one eye and rolled it in Myka's direction. "Because what you think happened then influences how you behave toward her now and how you interpret her actions."

"She's given us no reason not to view her with anything but suspicion. I also think she's constantly seeking an opportunity to bolt and to take Christina with her. But I know she won't do anything until she believes her plan can work, and, until then, she'll cooperate with us. Professional enough for you?" Myka asked dryly.

Leena moved her head in what might have been a nod. Again, not looking at her, more, Myka sensed, because Leena wanted to spare her than because she was uncomfortable with her own questions, Leena said, "Have you given any consideration to the possibility that her feelings for you were real and that part of what motivates her now may be a desire to make amends? If that's true, then she's not going to be looking for an opportunity to bolt. What she's going to be looking for is some sign that you've forgiven her, Myka. Not the agency, you. If you engage with her with that possibility in mind, you'll reinforce her desire to be cooperative, and, if you can't accept that it might have any meaning for you personally, you can always look at it as a positive for the team."

"That's stretching. She's being cooperative because we're all but holding her daughter hostage." Myka wondered if she was suggesting more about the true arrangement between Helena, the FBI, and Justice than she should, but then Leena always had a way of knowing exactly what was at stake in any given operation. It seemed to be of a piece with her purposefully nebulous role in the agency.

"I've seen how she looks at you." Both of Leena's eyes were open and focused intently on Myka.

"The same way she looks at all of us. With barely concealed contempt." At Leena's moué of displeasure, Myka amended sardonically, "Okay, she looks at me a little differently, with an extra dose of resentment. She thinks that I've had a hand in cooking up that mess she has going on with Christina's father, or at least that I don't have a problem with using a four-year-old in criminal investigations." Now Myka knew that she was saying too much; the party line was that Helena had reached out to the agency, hoping that her assistance would play well with a family judge, it didn't include the additional information that Justice had thrown Nate Burdette into the bargain. She didn't care; more than a month later, it still struck her as one of the slimiest deals she had been involved in as an agent. Her promise to keep Christina safe had come out of that mess, but it had done nothing to change Helena's opinion that she was one of the enemies, albeit a lesser enemy. The past two Sunday afternoons, Helena hadn't failed to give her a death stare over the top of Christina's head at least a half-dozen times. Which was just as well, it was better that Helena kept her in the enemy camp.

Leena was having none of it. "You know better than to try and snow me. If you don't know how she's looking at you, then it's because you're afraid to see it. And that's not good, for you or the team." She put the container of hummus and the bag of pita chips in Myka's lap. "Take these with you, I imagine it's the only dinner you'll get as well."

"I'm having dinner with Sam tonight." But Myka didn't try to give her back the chips and the hummus.

Another moué, almost sulky. "The third time isn't going to be the charm, you know."

"I keep telling you that we're not getting back together . . . it's just. . . comfortable with him," Myka finished helplessly, running her finger around the rim of the Tupperware lid. Leena had been encouraging her to do more than she had been since the divorce, which had been little more than dead-end coffee dates and, when all else failed at blocking out certain memories or exhausting her restlessness, the occasional pick-up. More often women than men, but no matter how casual or impromptu the encounter, none of the women she had slept with had had dark hair. That would be a disturbing note in her psych profile, if she had one (and she was pretty sure she did).

"We'll talk about this another time," Leena threatened. Sighing, she added, "I'm having some friends come over on Saturday. Bring Sam with you."

"Thanks, I'll have to see," Myka said, shrugging. "On Sunday, Helena wants to take Christina to a park. I was going to take some time and scope it out."

"Because she'll have hired a getaway car to lurk at the entrance." Leena's sigh this time was more aggravated than resigned. "Are you really sure she deserves this much suspicion, or are you just trying to rationalize why you're thinking so much about her?" With another therapist-like response, an arch of her eyebrow, Leena gave Myka a long look before leaving her alone on the bench.

Myka sat on the bench for longer than she had to. Following Leena back to the office too quickly was as good as saying she had a point with that last remark, but Myka wasn't choosing to think about Helena frequently. . . constantly. . . it was part of her job. She was beginning to feel a little chilled by the time she decided to go back in; the early May sun might be warm but the breeze was still cool. As had become her habit over the past couple of weeks, Myka squared her shoulders under her suit jacket and took a deep breath before flashing her badge at the card reader. She needed to be battle-ready. After dropping off the hummus and pita chips at her desk, which was in a cubicle that was marginally larger than most of the others in the office, she headed toward the conference room that was serving as their war room for as long as Helena was with them. It was toward the back of the office suite, within a few feet of Pete's office. Through the narrow pane of glass set into the door, she could see Steve, two of the other team members, and Helena's partial profile. She was bending over the contents of a file folder, pointing at an item that she wanted the team members to notice. Her cooperativeness extended to her presence on a daily basis and a cool civility as she shared her knowledge; it in no wise was meant to suggest that she was happy to be there.

Myka slipped into the room. At the sound of the door opening, everyone looked at her, Steve and Lee and Jennifer with relief, Helena with. . . the same banked hostility with which she greeted Myka every time she saw her. Leena was wrong; there was nothing else in Helena's eyes to see, anything softer would be consumed by the rage. "Ah, Agent Bering, now that you're back, perhaps you can explain to your colleagues the significance of this detail." With an almost contemptuous flick of her wrist, Helena pushed the folder down the table toward her.

Myka flipped through the papers, skimming their contents. It was one of a number of theft investigations that had been assigned to Lee and Jennifer because of certain similarities between the insurance claims. All filed with different insurance companies but all reporting the loss of valuable pieces of jewelry that had been discovered only weeks or months later when the owners had wanted to have them cleaned or reset. None of the filers were related to one another, worked together, or sent their kids to the same schools. The only apparent commonality was that the victims lived in exclusive suburbs north and west of the city, but it was hard to shake the feeling that something tied the victims together beyond the fact that they were well-to-do. Lee and Jennifer had asked about cleaning crews, landscapers, caterers, any service that might have had the victims as customers or clients, but they had found nothing helpful. Myka glanced through the police report of the most recent theft, her attention caught by a comment the interviewing officer had noted, "Mr. Ames joked that the thieves had overlooked other pieces of jewelry, and Mrs. Ames said she wished they had taken his Barrington Academy class ring." Without looking at Helena, she said to her, "The fact that the officer's a scrupulous note-taker isn't what you want me to come up with, is it?"

A noisy, derisive exhalation was Helena's response. Looking at Lee and Jennifer across the table, Myka asked, "Did you go back to the victims and ask them if they had attended Barrington?"

The agents shook their heads. Lee, like Myka, had been recruited straight out of law school, while Jennifer, a few years older, had worked at the SEC; both were still relatively new agents. "There's no mention of Barrington anywhere else in the file. We thought it was a one-off kind of thing, like someone mentioning to the police that he grew up in Des Moines."

"This has always smelled like insurance fraud more than it does simple theft," Helena impatiently interjected. "Seven thefts over a 15-month period, and only jewelry stolen. It's too long, too targeted, and too clean. There aren't many crews who could, or would, do that - not for relatively small payoffs. We're not talking about the Hope Diamond here. You can't overlook any possible link."

"You have to admit that it's pretty damn small, Helena." Myka's tone was mild, but the look she leveled at Helena wasn't. She didn't like sarcasm as a teaching method - perhaps because it had been her tutor throughout her childhood - and she wasn't entirely convinced that all the cases pointed to insurance fraud. "Seven people deciding to work together to scam their insurers? To me, this all speaks to a smaller organization. Maybe a few are frauds, but the rest are true thefts. A couple of school buddies decide they want to turn a lark into something more serious. They're at a friend's for a barbecue and one steals up to the master bedroom and takes a diamond ring from the jewelry armoire."

Helena lifted her chin. "If it were just a couple of school buddies on a lark, they would've already been caught. A maid would have seen them, one of them would have bragged to the wrong person. Somebody with some knowledge is behind this." Her chin was back at a normal level, but her eyes . . . there was something other than hostility in them. A four-year-old's challenge maximized. "Are you up to discovering that you may be wrong?"

Myka couldn't repress the smile that answered Helena's dare. She also couldn't deny that it was this Helena who made her heart beat a little faster, even now. The outfits were less slapdash and more firmly fixed in the business professional category, the hair betrayed a glint of silver here and there, and the face, more burdened, but even lovelier, perhaps, because it was evidence that she too had suffered, though not for the same reasons, underscored that this was not the same Helena, yet that look hadn't changed. It could still burn right through her. "This is Lee and Jennifer's case," she deflected, but the two of them were already holding their hands up in surrender.

"Be our guest," Jennifer said, reaching for the stack of file folders and plopping them in front of Myka. "Pete's even suggested that he might loan us to the securities team. They've got something big going on." She stared at Myka meaningfully. "It's more our bailiwick, anyway." What she all but said was that Helena was Myka's bailiwick, not her and Lee's.

"Let's go discuss this with Pete," Myka said to Helena, who wasn't trying, at all, to hide the smug expression on her face. She quietly added as Helena passed her in the doorway, "You'd better be prepared to accept the possibility that I may be right."

"The odds are slim," Helena said. She stopped to look at Myka over her shoulder. "What are you willing to wager that you're right?"

"We don't wager on cases," Myka said, stepping around her and continuing down the hallway to Pete's office.

"I'm not a professional, so don't expect professional behavior from me. If you want me at my best, you're going to have to put some skin in the game, Myka."

Myka laughed, and it sounded more genuine than rueful. "I did that before. I think I've learned my lesson."

Helena flushed. "It was a poor choice of words." She paused. "If I'm right about all of it, you buy me lunch for two weeks."

"And if I'm right?" Myka waited expectantly as Helena frowned, trying to think of something she could offer, and then waved her hand dismissively. "Let's forget it. You have no counteroffer." She had tried to say it lightly, but it fell hard into the space between them, along with the unspoken 'You never did.'

Helena heard what Myka didn't say, her flush growing deeper. "How about any humiliation, within reason, that you like? I have to quack like a duck when I enter the conference room? Or I have to sing  _The Star-Spangled Banner_  at your whim?"

She didn't have to save Helena's pride, but then she had gotten her digs in, intentional or not, which she had sworn to herself on Helena's first day that she wouldn't do. Who was being the bigger child? Placing her finger on her chin and pretending to mull over the suggestions, Myka said, "Enticing, but I think I can come up with something better. If I'm right, I get to teach Christina the CU fight song."

"She'll never remember it," Helena said quickly.

"That's not the point. The point is I sing, repeatedly, and you have to listen."

Helena frowned again, but it seemed directed more at the course of her own thoughts, as if she was thinking about something that unsettled her. Her expression clearing after a moment, although the challenge that flared in her eyes seemed to be struggling against another emotion, Helena said, "Lunch is not a sufficient reward against the possibility of hearing you sing. I need something better. If I'm right, you buy me, no, you  _make_  me dinner for two weeks."

"I can't cook, you know that."

"That's not the point. The point is that I make you do something you dread. I don't have to eat it."

"Dinner with your guard? I thought that's something you weren't going to do." Despite the fact that the collar of her blouse wasn't buttoned, Myka felt an uncomfortable tightness around her throat.

"I'm not inviting you to dinner. You're cooking for me, that's all," Helena insisted, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice.

"Only if you're right," Myka said, fleeing to safer ground. "And more than in your own mind," she added warningly.

"That's not going to be a problem."

Pete was with Leena at the conference table, and Myka had the feeling that she, Helena, or the both of them had been the subject under discussion when he motioned for them to come in. She had hardly begun to propose that she and Helena work together on the jewelry thefts when Pete nodded his approval. Leena, who had been idly observing them, flashed Myka another quirked eyebrow, therapist style, collected a couple of unmarked folders and mentioned that she had another meeting to attend. But Pete didn't automatically shoo them out of the office after Leena left, instead he pointed them each to a chair. "Sit down, thought we could have a status update on the Burdette thing."

Helena regarded him with the same slightly incredulous look she had worn since her first day when she learned that Pete had been promoted to team leader. Her sly "Ouch" to Myka had been her only comment, but the disbelief signaled by the crooked smile and the narrowed eyes was impossible not to read. Pete, for his part, who had always called her "Foxy Lady" out of her hearing eight years ago and then only to Myka, called her "Foxy Mama" to her face. When Helena would protest that it was inappropriate, he would say, "Your presence is inappropriate in this workplace, but I have to put up with it."

"There's no update to give," Myka hurriedly cut in before Helena could respond with something even less to Pete's liking.

"Justice is getting anxious." He turned from Myka to Helena. "They won't hesitate to throw you back in your cell and slam the door behind you if you don't give them something soon. So, Foxy Mama, if I were you, I'd get that busy little brain of yours focused on Burdette." He glanced back at Myka. "Has Sam said anything to you about it yet?"

Myka shook her head. Pete smiled at her knowingly. It didn't sit right on his face, mainly because he rarely tried out anything so smarmy on her. "I guess this time around he's trying to keep work out of the bedroom, right?"

Surprised, unpleasantly so, Myka could say only, "I'm sorry?"

Helena, who had been gazing up at the ceiling, as if praying for release, dropped her head to stare, hard, at Myka. "The Neanderthal, again, really?"

Pete brought his fingers to lips in an "Oops" gesture. "My bad for bringing in your private life, Mykes. I just thought Sam might have said something already."

The shit, he had done this deliberately. She couldn't very well punch him in the shoulder, not in front of Helena, but she could scowl, and she did. He knew what it meant. Then Helena's voice, cool and vaguely malevolent, floated across the table. "I have been giving some thought to what I could do to attract Nate's attention. I have a couple of ideas, but I want to talk them over with Myka first and get her read on them before I broach them to you or Mr. Martino. Is that acceptable?"

"You have until the end of this week to give me a plan." He had no sooner said it than Helena was halfway to the door, while Myka lingered at the table. Pete flinched under her glare and protectively crossed his hands over his shoulders. "If you have to hit me, I can take a gut shot or two, but not the shoulders. The kids and I were wrestling last night, and I practically dislocated my right shoulder."

"What the hell was going on with that comment about Sam keeping 'work out of the bedroom?'" Myka relented enough to flop back into her chair.

"I dunno," Pete growled, deciding, once Myka wasn't standing over him, that he could lower his arms. "Just seeing the two of you together, like Batman and Robin." At a renewed glare from Myka, he changed the comparison. "Or, you know, Thor and Loki, when Loki was pretending to be good." That comparison earned him a snort. "Anyway, it was déja vu all over again, and I wanted her to know that you weren't available to her." He asked hesitantly, "You aren't available to her, are you, Mykes? 'Cause I've seen the way she looks at you sometimes, and -"

"Have you and Leena been exchanging notes?" Myka demanded. "There are no 'looks,' there have been no 'looks,' and there won't be any 'looks.' Where's all that 'You're the best' and 'You can handle it, Mykes'? Jesus Christ, Pete, she practically ruined me. Why would I set myself up for a repeat disaster? You either trust me or you don't."

"I do trust you, but there's still something between you and her, and everyone's aware of it, except you, apparently." He lifted his hands and let them fall back into his lap, suggesting a helplessness that Myka wasn't ready to believe was sincere. As if he sensed her doubt, he said, "To be honest, I felt a whole lot more comfortable about this thing before she walked into this office, and I saw that the first person she looked for was you. And you're not much better." He smiled, sadly, as Myka snapped her head up, dismayed. "It's like it was eight years ago, you two have zeroed in on each other, and it's as if the rest of us don't exist."

"Of course, I've zeroed in on her. She's planning to screw us over, sooner or later." Myka was leaning forward in her chair, searching Pete's face for some hint of the goofy smile that always told her he was putting her on. He  _was_  putting her on, he had to be, he was just going about it a different way, playing it completely straight. "Don't worry about me. I've got this, okay?"

"Okay." Still no goofy smile, and, if anything, he looked more concerned, but he pushed his chair back from the table indicating that the meeting was over.

Myka slowly walked back to her desk. She sagged against her chair, running her hands, one after the other, through her hair. Great, first it was Leena and then it was Pete questioning her ability to manage her emotions around Helena, which, by extension, meant they were questioning her ability to manage this assignment. An assignment I never wanted in the first place, she silently yelled, but shouting at them in her head didn't do any good. Yes, if she was being honest, she still responded to Helena on some level, but it hardly meant that she was about to run off with her to a tropical island. First of all, there would be no running because they would have a four-year-old, her clothes, her toys, her stuffed animals, and her nonnie to take with them. Myka smiled at the ludicrous image; she was holding Helena's hand and Helena was holding Christina's hand and Christina, in turn, was clutching at Jemma's. Poor Jemma was being yanked off her feet, in the unenviable end position of the Bering-Wells version of Crack the Whip. Second of all, she had burned down her life around her once, she wasn't going to run into the fire a second time. No matter how pretty the flames looked.

Until this afternoon when Helena had challenged her over the jewelry thefts and she had seen that cocky glint in Helena's eyes, she hadn't even noticed her, not with that gut-twitching pull she had felt in the months preceding their becoming lovers and during the months that they had been lovers. All right, all right, she has been struck the week before by how attractive Helena was in a black pant suit with a scarlet blouse, but she would have been just as struck by any woman with the same coloring and a complexion resembling a snowbell in bloom. The issue wasn't how she responded to Helena's exterior, the issue was how she responded to her interior, and she knew already that the only thing that occupied it was Christina; the rest was a wasteland, a desert, the black vacuum of space, the . . . .

With a dull thud, the pile of case folders landed on the corner of her desk. "Bedtime reading," Helena said sarcastically, "Mr. Martino's exertions to keep you awake notwithstanding."

Myka wearily rolled her eyes up at her. For someone whose interior was a barren expanse, Helena seemed genuinely angry. There was nothing cocky or challenging in how she was looking at Myka; her mouth was set so hard that Myka could practically hear the grinding of her teeth. Helena probably saw her . . . thing . . . with Sam as more proof of the agency's underhandedness. Myka had promised to protect her daughter, yet she was sleeping with the man who was willing to put Christina at risk. Not that Sam personally was tossing Christina at Nate Burdette's feet, it was the office he was representing that was doing it. Myka realized only then that she didn't know how Sam truly felt about it, if he found it as repugnant as she did or if he believed that putting Helena and her family in jeopardy was worth the chance to capture Burdette. What the hell were she and Sam doing if she didn't know something like that? Regardless, whatever their . . . arrangement . . . was exactly, whatever its quicksand and sink holes, none of it was any of Helena's business, and she had no right to act as if she were the victim of some horrific deception. Leave it to a con artist to be outraged at the thought that she was being conned -

"What I do outside this office and -." Myka tried to keep her voice even only to find herself abruptly cut off.

"Do you love him?" Helena asked flatly.

Her mouth having opened in surprise, Myka clamped it shut. She needed to calm down. One second, two. The hell with that. She ground out, "What the hell right do you have to -"

Helena leaned in, the dark eyes burning into Myka's. "I need to know that the woman who promised me she would keep Christina safe will - even if it means defying her U.S. Assistant Attorney boyfriend." Her pronouncing of "boyfriend" was so scornful that Myka flinched from its heat.

"I keep my promises." Myka didn't look away from her, steadily holding Helena's gaze.

"Do you love him?" Helena asked again, so close now that Myka was helpless not to look away. She couldn't bear the intensity. She could almost feel the press of Helena's forehead against hers, the ticklish slide of black hair against her skin. Helena's voice was hoarse, the anger gone, making what had been a demand an actual question, and Myka was already responding to a tremor in Helena's voice that she was half-convinced she had imagined, slowly sucking in a breath that she heard Helena drawing in too, as if they were sharing air like they would a milkshake, teenagers in an ice cream parlor, heads together, aware only of each other.

A discreet cough caused her to launch her chair to the opposite end of her work station, and Myka knew that the color was mounting in her face when she lifted her eyes to see who had stopped by. Steve was standing just outside the entry to her cubicle, attention shifting from her to Helena, who had straightened just enough to slouch against the desk, legs extended and ankles casually crossed, claiming possession of the space and everything in it.

"Sorry to interrupt. I wanted to let you know that Pete put me on the case as well." He directed his words to Myka, but he continued to glance at Helena.

"Just like the old days," she said softly, wickedly to Myka, "you, me, and Jughead." She pursed her lips, taking her time taking Steve in. "You're a good boy, aren't you? Eager to please. Not Jughead, no, no, you're Archie."

"I think I prefer Agent Sunshine," he said, placing his hand on the top of the cubicle's wall, announcing his own right to Myka's time.

"As you wish." Helena shrugged, pushing herself away from the desk. She tapped the folders. "Enjoy."

Still caught in that moment when it had seemed to matter to Helena, beyond promises to protect Christina, whether she loved Sam, Myka was irritated that Helena appeared to have recovered so quickly. While she was trying to catch her breath and settle her pulse, Helena nimbly leaped from being distraught to being snarky. She had been played, Myka concluded, pure and simple. Watching Helena flash Steve a sassy grin as she exited made Myka only the more disgruntled, and she said sharply, "Those ideas you wanted to bounce off me? I want them tomorrow, in writing and in detail." It was a ridiculous demand, and Myka knew she sounded pettish, an overmatched high school teacher squaring off against the class smartass.

Helena turned back to her, head quizzically cocked but the sassy grin still in place. "I like to think as I talk," she countered, "and I'm sure I'm due for an 'unscheduled' bed check. Why don't we kill two birds with one stone? Unless you're already planning to check Mr. Martino's bed. . . ." She didn't wait for Myka's answer, disappearing down the corridor.

Steve waited until she was out of view then pulled out the single, uncomfortable visitor's chair and bonelessly slid into it. He rubbed his close-cropped hair before hooking a thumb in the direction Helena had taken. "It looked like I interrupted something pretty intense going on between the two of you. Do you want to talk about it?"

Myka's instinct was to scowlingly dismiss his concern. She wasn't up for a third round of advice; on the other hand, he had to put up with her, she was his partner. Pete and Leena could witness the multi-car pile-up that she and Helena were together from a distance, Steve was a passenger. She strove for lightness. "Just a minor traffic accident." Before she could stop herself and before she could blunt its bitter edge, she said, "Helena, as usual, walks away without a scratch."

"I wouldn't say that. I think she was putting on an act for my benefit."

Again her instinct was to growl her disagreement, but she recognized that he was trying only to console her. He  _was_  a good boy, plus he had an uncanny talent for seeing into the heart of a situation. Hesitantly Myka said, "Leena and Pete are worried that I can't be objective about her. Do you think they have a point? I mean, am I fucking things up for the team?"

Steve arched his neck and looked up at the ceiling panels, as if he were going to count them. "Sometimes it's like you're poking each other with sticks, but I don't know that it's more annoying than Jennifer's 'At the SEC, we did this ' and 'At the SEC, we did that' or Lee's showing up fifteen minutes late for everything." He rolled his head to the side to grin at her. "Or my daily updates on finding a surrogate." The grin faded. "She's a strange fish. I've read the file we have on her, but it doesn't make sense to me, she doesn't make sense to me. What does an artist and sometime art conservator, art restorer, whatever they're called, know about counterfeit designer outfits? Or insurance fraud?"

This was a conversation about Helena Myka could handle; it was easy to be objective and factual when all she had to do was treat her like a case study. She began reciting Helena's background like she would any other criminal's. "Jim Wells was her father. He was a lot like her, only more so. When he was young, he was a painter like her, but more talented, or so the critics say. But that all ended when he was caught trying to pass off a Matisse he had forged. He had a gambling habit even then." She wasn't recalling this from any file. During one of those infrequent "couple dinners" she and Helena had had with Jemma, Jemma had opened a second and, eventually, a third bottle of wine and talked about her years with Jim Wells. Myka had been fascinated, Helena not at all, leaving them at the dining room table and taking a magazine with her onto her mother's balcony. "He had an eye, Jemma told me. He appreciated color and design, and if he wasn't trying to steal it, he was trying to reproduce it. If he couldn't do it, he hired someone who could."

"Like his daughter?"

"That's what everyone thinks now. She may not be the artist he was, but technically her work is flawless, and she's a master imitator. It's why she can find work repairing damaged paintings; her additions are virtually indistinguishable from the original. It's also what makes her a master forger. My old boss, Bates, and his bosses had their doubts about her, but she knew her father's network, and she was willing to give it to us." Myka tugged at her hair, a memory she would prefer not to recall beginning to tease her. "She said it was the right thing to do, and Bates and the assistant directors bought it."

"Maybe a part of her meant it." Steve shifted in the chair, fruitlessly trying to find a comfortable position. "After all, she did give up some of her father's associates."

"The ones he wanted her to," Myka said tersely. The deception had been funny at the time, but it had also been a warning sign, and she had been so head over heels, she hadn't taken notice of how slick, how smooth Helena could be, or how many, many tricks she had in her bag. . . .

_Helena wanted to take her to dinner at an exclusive restaurant, so exclusive that it was forbidden territory to all but celebrities, sports figures, and politicians. And not every politician could finagle a table, it was rumored that the governor had been turned down at least once. Myka was content to stay where they were and order out for pizza or make grilled cheese sandwiches every night. Food wasn't something she spent a lot of time thinking about, and she wanted to spend even less time thinking about it, preparing it, or eating it now. But Helena was insistent, and she had a plan for getting in, she said, smiling that smile of hers, the one that started at the center, as if her lips were trying to hold back a secret. She waggled her phone at Myka and keyed in the restaurant's number._

_Myka wondered what "in" Helena could possibly have. She wasn't especially famous, and it was unlikely that she could trade on her father's notoriety. She wasn't especially wealthy, although she did happen to have a fabulous loft, if you liked large, uncluttered spaces that still spoke to the warehouse that used to house them. And she definitely didn't do politics. Myka crossed her arms behind her head and prepared to enjoy the show - for the few seconds that it would last - from the sofa, one of approximately four pieces of furniture in the loft._

_But when Helena spoke, it was Meryl Streep, asking for a table for two, wanting to share a romantic dinner with her long-suffering spouse. As she spoke, Helena also pretended that she was trying to shush a personal assistant, crying out with a little laugh that she was more than capable of making a dinner reservation. Her party on the other end of the call must have agreed because Helena warmly offered her appreciation for being allowed to "sweep in at such short notice." There must have been compliments streaming forth from the restaurant staff because Helena laughed once more, indulgently, and with a touch of false modesty, claiming that dinner would be her reward for the privations she had recently endured on location. She, of course, was her spouse's reward. Another, more seductive laugh, the reservation taken, "Under Helena Wells, please, one of my favorite aliases," and the call concluded. Helena spun around to view the effect of her performance on Myka, who was staring at her, dumbfounded. After tossing her phone on the floor, because the only table, the one off the kitchen, was half a football field away, Helena straddled her, pulling up Myka's shirt and unbuttoning her jeans, mischief and desire and triumph in her voice and in her eyes. "How about spending the afternoon in bed with La Streep? She needs to work up an appetite." Then Helena was nipping her belly, letting her tongue trail down. . . ._

"So how was it?" Steve asked.

"Incredible," Myka said softly.

"I meant the dinner," he teased, and she blushed.

"That's what I was referring to," she said defensively, the blush continuing to travel up her face. "We waited as long as we could. Helena figured they would hold onto the table for awhile, chalking up Meryl Streep's no show to celebrities being celebrities. So we swanned in about 40 minutes late, and they didn't want to give us the table, but Helena pointed to her name on the reservation list and said it wasn't her fault that they thought she sounded like Meryl Streep. Of course, she's hamming up her accent, sounding like she came off the set of  _Downton Abbey_." Myka heard the smile n her voice and decided to surrender to it. "It  _was_  a great dinner. . . ."

Steve smiled back. "I haven't seen you look like that in a long time, like you're happy." As Myka's face began to cloud over, he said, "It's not a sin, Myka, to remember that it wasn't all bad." The smile grew sly. "You know, when I stopped by, I got the distinct impression you two weren't poking each other with sticks. In fa-a-a-a-ct -"

She showed him the palm of her hand. "Stop right there. Don't say it, don't think it."

"'I'm not the one going there," he said innocently. "You are." He rose from the chair, putting it back in its corner. He loitered in the space between the two panels that formed the entrance to her cubicle, as though he was ready to listen if she wanted to say more. But she didn't want to talk about the past, her and Helena's past, believing that if she kept walking over it, tamping it down, she might actually succeed in burying it. The silence didn't grow uncomfortable exactly, but Myka sensed there was a weight to it, as if Steve were thinking she should speak. Her lips thinned, she didn't like pregnant silences. It had been one of her father's favorite ways of disciplining her when she was young. She would have done something wrong, or he would think that she had, and he wouldn't speak to her, expecting her to confess her error, and the longer she took to confess, the longer he would maintain his silence. Once, when she was a teenager, it had stretched to a week, until one morning when she opened her bedroom door she felt that she would fall to the floor from the weight of it, and she had admitted something, anything, to get out from under it.

But Steve wasn't her father. Her father wasn't even her father any longer, Alzheimer's slowly claiming him. She gusted a weak laugh. "If you ever see me with my tongue down Helena's throat, don't hesitate to shoot me, okay?"

"Deal." He slapped one of the panels. "But don't ask the same thing of Pete, he'd just -"

"Pull up a chair and watch, I know. He's such a horn dog." Myka's laugh was stronger.

After another slap of the panel, Steve pivoted to go down the corridor to his own cubicle, which, unlike Myka's, was in the office's cubicle farm. He spun back. "You know what really gripes me? That accent of hers. She's been here how long, twenty years or so?"

"Her parents split up when she was little, and she and Jemma went back to Britain. It's not fake, but she can lay it on thick. Ask her to trot out her Southern drawl or her upstate voice, if you want to hear something different. If she's still the ham she used to be, she'll be happy to do it."

"Maybe I'll ask her to do her Meryl Streep. It seems to work wonders," he said impishly.

"Her Bacall's devastating. Make sure you're not alone with her if she whips it out."

They were grinning at each other. It was easy to talk about Helena this way, too, as if she were just another co-worker whose quirks and idiosyncrasies you laughed about when she wasn't around to hear you. Steve gave her a little farewell wave and Myka rolled her chair closer to her desk. She should start on the folders and get up to speed on the jewelry thefts. Her nightly workout session might have to be trimmed down a little, she'd need to leave time to meet with Helena later in the evening. Sam. Dinner. Shit.

She didn't question why the decision was so easy to make. It was work, after all, meeting with Helena. And work always came first, it was one of the fundamental things she and Sam had in common. She also didn't question why she chose to text him rather than call him. He was probably in meetings, and the call would go to voicemail anyway.

_Something came up. Rain check on dinner?_

No endearments, no "Babe" or "Hon" or "Marvelous Martino Man" (which she had called him only once, when she was drunk, and she blamed it rather than the excessive number of tequila shots for the vomiting that came minutes later). No Sorry's, no Miss you's, no Love, Myka's. They didn't do that, they never had.

She had done it before, with someone else. She had learned her lesson.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to push on ahead with Chapter Five, which may not have been the wisest course of action. Ten thousand words in one week - whew, won't be doing that again for awhile. *Sound of Scotchplaid collapsing* Back to my normal schedule and other fics after this.

It was after 9:00 when she arrived at Mrs. Frederic's brownstone, an opened vending-machine-sized package of Twizzlers and the remains of Leena's pita chips and hummus littering the passenger seat. There was a spot she could squeeze into in front of the fire hydrant, so she took it; she didn't plan on being here all that long, long enough to listen to Helena's ideas for entrapping Nate Burdette, if she truly had any, and that was it. Afterward she could stop by Sam's, make it up to him for bowing out of dinner, if she wanted to. Right now, she wasn't feeling it, but a half-hour in Helena's company could change her mind.

There weren't any lights on in the home except for those on the third floor. Perhaps Mrs. Frederic was out volunteering somewhere or visiting her grandchildren. Or maybe she was sitting in her living room, quietly watching the street. That didn't seem so unlikely, and Myka rolled her shoulders uneasily, feeling the woman's eyes on her. She rang the doorbell, which, as she had squinted at it in the dark, looked like it was labeled WELLS; the unscheduled inspection would have to wait for a time when Helena wasn't expecting her. The thought made her sigh. Perhaps Steve would be willing to do it, she wasn't looking forward to rummaging through Helena's underwear drawer or pawing through the nightstand and finding what else may have joined the vibrator.

The outside light flickered on, and Claudia opened the door. "Helena told me it was going to be you, but I was hoping for a surprise." She had a half-sandwich in one hand, and Myka could smell the melted cheese. Seriously not. . . . "Are you going to come in or are you going to stand out there gaping at me like a goldfish?" Not waiting for a reply, Claudia was clomping toward the staircase. She didn't turn on an interior light, and Myka stumbled against the riser of the first step, putting a hand against the wall to steady herself. She grimaced but didn't say anything. In a few minutes, she would have the pleasure of kicking Claudia out of Helena's apartment.

Claudia's grilled cheese couldn't be a coincidence. It had been what Myka made for herself when she returned, late in the evening, to Helena's loft, after hours spent at the office and in the agency's fitness room away from her. She liked to make it as her meal, not just because grilled cheese was easy and quick but because it was the dairy equivalent of Twizzlers, especially if you held the bread at arm's-length, drawing the cheese out into a long, gooey band. (String cheese, which appeared to be a permanent part of the Christina Wells (or Winslow) menu, was a soulless substitute.) Even now, it was one of her favorite comfort foods. When Claudia opened the door to the apartment, Myka heard the sizzle of bread frying in a skillet . . . in butter, if her nose wasn't telling her wrong. God, Helena wasn't playing fair. Myka didn't have a good view into the kitchen, standing stiffly as she was just inside the door, but she could see that Helena was bending over the top of the small stove. Claudia was toeing off an ancient pair of combat boots onto a mat and eating the remainder of her sandwich at the same time.

"I tried to return her to her owners," Claudia mock-complained through a mouthful of cheese, "but she just kept following me. I'm not sure she's housebroken."

Helena came out to the dining table, pointing her spatula at Myka but talking to Claudia. "We have to feed her since she's here, and I'm afraid that with her here, it's time for you to go home."

Claudia looked down at her feet in their mismatched socks and then at Myka. "And I bet you were just itching to kick my ass down the stairs, weren't you?" She stuffed the last corner of her sandwich into her mouth and began to put on her boots again. She didn't bother to lace them, but she made no additional move to leave. Instead she surveyed the room, letting her glance light on Helena, before she said, "I didn't find anything, but it can all change tomorrow, you know?" She picked up a black satchel from the floor beside the mat and slung it over her shoulder. "See you later."

Myka didn't step out of her way immediately, daring Claudia to nudge, or push, her aside. They locked eyes until Claudia reluctantly looked down, and only then did Myka step farther into the room and away from the door. Claudia slammed the door so hard it rattled. Helena had been observing them, and she said mildly, "You have fifteen years and forty pounds on her." She turned back to the stove. "I fear your sandwich has burned."

"I don't want it." Myka glowered for good measure.

"Yes, you do, because all you've had since I last saw you was Twizzlers." Helena disappeared farther into the kitchen only to return with a plate, which she placed on the counter, sliding the grilled cheese onto it. "Look, I need you to be able to focus, and your plunging blood sugar levels won't help." She put the plate on the table. "Now get over here and eat it while it's still warm." As Myka remained, mulishly, where she was, Helena added, "I haven't poisoned it."

Myka slowly approached the table and pulled out a chair. She pulled it out so far that it seemed she was still in the living room, but she could reach the plate with the tips of her fingers. She set it in her lap. The sandwich wasn't all that burned, and if the truth be told, she liked the bread burned a little. She nibbled a corner. "You can't have Claudia sweeping the place for bugs."

Helena put a glass of water in front of her. "I would offer you wine, but I don't have any." She smiled grimly. "I haven't even checked to see if it's a forbidden item, I'm doing it for my own protection. There's not enough liquor in the world to wash away the taste of this arrangement we have." As Myka's nibbles of the sandwich turned into bites, the hardness of Helena's expression softened, and she said, "You'd work late and come home about nine, and you'd fill the kitchen with smoke making grilled cheese. I didn't think your patterns would have changed all that much." If Helena realized she had used the word "home," she didn't seem to care. Myka, on the other hand, almost choked on the bite she was swallowing.

Once past the danger of choking to death, Myka took additional refuge in repeating, "You can't have Claudia sweeping the place for bugs."

And it was just as swiftly that the softness disappeared and Helena's expression became closed off and wary. "You don't know how dangerous Nate is, and I don't trust that there isn't someone in the FBI who's in his pocket. It may seem an absurd precaution to you, but I won't risk my daughter, Myka. If you feel you have to report this, go ahead."

The lift of Helena's chin seemed especially accusatory, and Myka unthinkingly pushed back some strands of hair that had escaped the loose knot she had bunched it into for her workout. Great, now she had bread crumbs caught in her hair. "I'm not going to report it, but if you feel that unsafe talking about Nate here, we can go elsewhere. There has to be a bar, a coffee shop, some place around here that's open in the evenings. I'm sure you don't think my place is any safer."

"And about as inviting as a monk's cell," Helena said wryly, "unless that's changed about you."

Her place was clean and organized and furnished. More furnished than Helena's loft had been. Granted the furniture in her apartment had been bought as a suite, which had been on display, but it matched and still looked new - more than two years after it had been delivered. Myka supposed some people wouldn't see that as a positive. The apartment she had lived in when she and Helena had been involved had been old and small, barely larger than a studio, and the furniture she had purchased had been second-hand, except for the bed. But the mattress and box spring, though new, were cheap, and after the one night Helena had spent in it, she made the rule that all subsequent overnights would happen in her loft. After a month, no more than that, the rule had been superfluous because Myka had all but moved in. She would visit her apartment once a week to check the mail. The only time she had ever cried about Helena's betrayal was during her first night back in the apartment, back in that horrible swaybacked bed and all she could remember was the feel of their bodies together and how Helena had laughed at the loud, protesting creaks of the box spring.

But she wouldn't be telling Helena that. "It suits me." She shrugged and put the empty plate back on the table. "Tell me what your ideas are for getting Nate Burdette's attention."

"You have to understand, despite your boyfriend's beliefs to the contrary, Nate has no interest in me. We were together for six months when I was nineteen years old, mainly because we were more turned on by fucking with my father than fucking each other. And when that was over, we both moved on. At my father's funeral, we exchanged a few words, and I didn't see him again after that." Helena had drawn up one leg, hugging it to her and resting her chin on her knee. "There's no personal relationship to build on."

Myka wanted to rub her eyes to clear her vision. Wearing yoga pants and a long-sleeved top and hugging her leg to her chest, this Helena was the Helena she would come h . . . she would see when she returned to the loft of an evening, waiting at the trestle table off the kitchen, two glasses and a bottle of wine in front of her. Brusquely she asked, "It was mutual, your splitting up? You just tired of each other, and you waved good-bye? Hard to believe someone as ruthless as Nate Burdette would let you go so easily."

"You may be prejudiced," Helena said quietly but with the hint of a smile. "And Nate wasn't Nate twenty years ago. I had just come to the States, at Jim's behest. I was angry at being summoned, and Nate, even then, was butting heads with him. Anger fueled the attraction." A bark of a laugh. "Anger was the attraction, and back then. . . ." She hesitated, thumbnail making a groove in the material over her knee. "Back then, I liked the threat of violence, until the night Nate was violent with me. That's all it took. He made a few half-hearted attempts to win me back, but there were other women, there had always been other women, and Nate left me alone after a few weeks."

"How badly did he hurt you?" Myka remembered pictures she had seen of a teenaged Helena in photo albums that Jemma had pulled from bookshelves, the hair considerably shorter and spiked, the make-up garish, the clothes ripped and torn. A Claudia when Claudia herself was just an infant or toddler. She felt . . . she didn't know how she felt. Not protective, exactly, since it was easier to believe people needed to be protected from Helena than to believe that Helena needed protection herself, but it made her oddly jittery to think of Helena being hit. She wanted to walk around the room or go out on the balcony. Instead she held herself very still.

"He slapped me one night, hard enough to break my nose. He was drunk, but all the blood sobered him up." Helena stopped running her thumb across her knee. "I stayed with my father for a few days. I made up some story about what had happened, but he knew it was Nate."

"You must have really been afraid of him if you decided to stay with your father."

Helena narrowed her eyes. "What are you getting at, Myka?"

"Maybe he had stronger feelings for you than you think. Or maybe he blames you for the split with your father. You say there aren't any old feelings, but how can you be sure?"

Helena laughed, another harsh bark. "You think Jim severed connections with Nate because he hit his daughter? Nate was still bringing in money for him, and Jim thought I deserved having my nose broken for taking up with Nate in the first place. It didn't help their relationship, but it was hardly the last straw." She leaned over to pick up the plate and took it into the kitchen. "Believe me, there's nothing about me that Nate has the least interest in anymore," she said over the sound of running water. She came to the end of the counter and leaned her hip against it, this time hugging her arms around her waist. It drew down the vee of her top, revealing the swell of her breasts, and Myka looked away. No sense giving Helena the idea she was checking her out.

"So, what do you have?" Her mind was still on the story Helena had told her about her time with Burdette. She hadn't known about Nate when she and Helena had been together, she hadn't known about Helena's previous lovers in any detail. The file the FBI had had on Helena at the time had been slim, and other than noting in strange officialese that "Ms. Wells appears to have bisexual proclivities," there had been no information about her relationships. Helena hadn't been circumspect so much as off hand or indifferent when recalling an old boyfriend or girlfriend. Myka had received the strong impression that their relationship was the first significant relationship Helena had had, and she realized much later than she should have, long after Houston, that it was precisely the impression that Helena had wanted her to have.

And her own reticence? She hadn't named names or spoken at any length of her past relationships, almost embarrassingly few in number, because they had been insignificant in comparison. She hadn't been trying to lead Helena toward a predetermined conclusion because she hadn't known, until Helena, that they had been unimportant. Mark had seemed important because he had been her first, Rachel because, well, she had been a first, too, and then Sam, but what had made them memorable, Mark's sweetness and patience, Rachel's intimidating intelligence (and her positively sexy pronunciation of all those Latin legal phrases during their first year of law school), and Sam's ambition, lost distinctiveness in the shadows cast by Helena's sun.

"How familiar are you with the thefts at the Bowdoin Art Museum?" Helena had returned to her chair at the table, and Myka silently conceded that there was nothing particularly sun-like about her now. She was hunched over the tabletop, her thumbnail between her teeth, worry lines wrinkling her forehead.

"Enough to know that your father has always been a primary suspect." It remained the biggest art heist in U.S. history, a treasure haul of late nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings and sketches. Although every law enforcement agency brought in to investigate had believed that the thieves received inside help, no one had ever been able to isolate who among the museum staff had been a part of the theft. At one time or another, suspicion had fallen on the curators, the directors, the various assistants, the security guards, even the janitorial crew and the volunteer tour guides, but there had been no confessions, no inadvertent disclosures. The only mistake was that the security guards hadn't been sufficiently disabled, and when one regained consciousness and drew his gun on the thieves, he had been killed. Myka knew that it was also commonly believed that the murder had hampered the thieves' ability to sell the works since there was never an indication from the agencies' confidential informants that any of the art had been placed. Few potential buyers wanted to be associated with a murder, particularly if it remained unsolved. Looking at the pensive woman across from her and thinking that, in her yoga pants and worrying a fingernail, Helena hardly seemed the picture of a criminal mastermind, Myka reminded herself that Helena had been in the States a year before the Bowdoin Museum was robbed. Granted, she had been a student at a design school hundreds of miles away, but she was still Jim Wells' daughter.

"I've been a part of many deceptions, Myka, but I wasn't part of that. My father didn't trust me, especially since I had taken up with Nate, and he sidelined me with . . . smaller projects. He never admitted or denied that he was behind the break-in in my hearing, and I knew better than to ask him. But that's not what's crucial." She took a deep breath. "What's crucial is that Nate wasn't in on it either." Smiling tremulously, Helena let her eyes drift away from the table. "I heard this from Charlie, as I did everything I know about Bowdoin. He told me that he and Nate had been working with Jim on it from the beginning. And then something went wrong with a scam he and Nate had been working - Nate put one of the people they were fleecing in the hospital - and Jim shut them out. He couldn't afford to have anything go wrong, and Nate was proving to be unpredictable. Of course, something did go wrong, and it only infuriated Nate the more that Jim had taken him off the job. Charlie said that Nate never forgave Jim for it." This time she shuddered as she breathed in, and the sadness in her face had been replaced by apprehension. "Nate wants the Bowdoin haul, he always has, and I'm going to give it to him. At least that's what I want him to think I'm going to do."

"If Nate's as powerful as the FBI and Justice believe he is, and if he's wanted the art as badly as you say he does, what makes you think he hasn't already gotten it? Your father's been dead for six years, your brother for two, and the others who were your father's partners, the ones we suspect anyway, they're old men, by and large, and some are in ill health. Nate wouldn't have had to threaten them, he could have bought them off." Myka thought she already knew what Helena's answer would be, but it had been a long time since they had worked together on a case, and, despite being able to follow Helena's train of thought about the jewelry thefts, Myka wondered if they would be able to work together well enough to be effective. She didn't expect a return of the tendency they had to finish each other's thoughts, but she needed to know that they could reach the same conclusions.

"They may be old and in ill health, but what's that line from every police procedural? There's no statute of limitations on murder." Helena wasn't so apprehensive about trying to con Nate Burdette that she couldn't summon a cynical smile. "Nobody wants to end his life in prison, take it from me, and none of them would trust Nate's willingness to run interference in a resumption of the murder investigation."

"Do you know where the works are?" Myka asked it casually, but she could feel her skin prickle, as if she were about to sweat through her clothes again, as she had on that first trip to the prison. She didn't know why Helena's answer was important to her since what were the odds that she would believe it? But she was remembering Leena's measuring look, her quiet suggestion that perhaps she had it all, or mainly, wrong, that Helena could be trusted, because Helena was looking out for someone other than herself this time. On the flip side, maybe Helena knew where the stolen art was, had known where it was all the time, and had been waiting, years even, for just the right distraction. She would direct the eyes of law enforcement one way, toward Nate Burdette, while she slipped away with a painting or two. That would be all she needed, one or two; in combination with what she must have gotten for setting up the Marston Gallery thefts, the black market sale of a Bowdoin Picasso or Van Gogh would set her and Christina up for life, no matter how princely - princessly? - they chose to live.

"What answer do you want to hear?" Helena asked, almost plaintively. "Which would you be most inclined to believe?"

"I don't know."

"I understand that it's easier to believe that everything I ever told you was a lie, but it wasn't." Helena had quit worrying her thumbnail and, instead, was hugging both legs to her chest. "You know what was true, Myka."

Knees practically under her chin, pretzeling herself like Christina might, Helena presented a vulnerability that Myka couldn't accept, and she turned away, looking at the balcony doors and the night beyond them. As black as night, some might describe Helena's hair and eyes, but they were darker yet because the night, with all its hobgoblins and knife-wielding madmen, the stuff of the campfire stories that had terrorized Myka when she was a child, couldn't hurt her as Helena had. Maybe the only response to an impossible question was to brush it aside.

"I guess what's more important is whether Burdette will believe you."

"Not without proof that I have access to the works." She paused, resignation settling over her face. "So I'm planning to do what I've always done, which is fake it."

"And you just happen to have a forged Picasso to give him?" Myka was only half-joking.

"He's not going to be easy to fool. I'll have to be clever." She had given "clever" a mocking lilt, but her tone sobered. "I'll need your help. I have to go somewhere out of the range of my monitor, and I don't want the FBI at large to know the real reason for why that is." Her expression began to lighten. "You'll have to provide a plausible explanation for why we need to go to Hoboken."

"Hoboken?" Myka echoed.

"Hoboken," Helena confirmed, amused.

"Why do you --"

"That's what you'll need to invent for everyone else. As for you, you'll understand once we get there."

She could demand an explanation now about why they had to go to Hoboken, but it was past 10:00, and she was tired and still a little hungry. Helena had always liked to draw out the suspense, whether it concerned a discovery about a case or a surprise she had been holding back for days. Sometimes it had been tickets to a show; on other occasions, it had been weekend jaunts to an inn in the Adirondacks or New England. Myka had learned that the more she pressed, the more annoyingly vague Helena would become. "Okay" was all she chose to say as she rose and pushed the chair closer to the table.

Something about the way she had said it caused Helena to look suddenly abashed. "I'm not trying to tease you, I just want you to see it without my explaining it first." She hugged her legs tighter to her. "I know I'm not being very clear, but it'll make sense when you see it."

Myka spread her arms in concession. "I'm too tired to argue, Helena, I'm going home."

"Before you do, I want your input on something." Helena unfolded herself and started down the hallway, stopping in front of the second bedroom.

Myka reluctantly trailed after her, noticing that the bed and dresser in the room had been removed. In their place was a worktable of sorts with a paint-splattered straight-back chair. An easel that appeared old enough to have come from a Picasso's studio was off to one side, but it held no pad or canvas. A homemade kite was propped against a wall, decorated with a painting of what looked like a miniature goat. Myka picked it up; it was lighter than she had expected, the material stretched over the frame not canvas as she was expecting but muslin or something similar, more bedsheet than sail.

"We're flying kites this Sunday?" She put the kite down.

Helena was at the table, a hand smoothing, straightening a large square of the same white fabric. At the end of the table was another square, with an unfinished painting of Van Gogh-like sunflowers. Some of the flowers had already been painted a dark gold; others were still just sketched in. "Ever since last Sunday, it's all Christina's been talking about. Thank you for reminiscing about flying kites when you were a child." She had attempted to say the last sourly, but a fond smile that creased her face whenever she talked about Christina gave away the fact that the prospect of flying kites - and the labor she was expending making them - wasn't as onerous as she was letting on.

Kite flying. Christina had been sprawled on the living room floor, drawing flowers in a sketchbook, the most recognizable of them being tulips, looking like Pacmans ready to gobble the sky. Helena was next to her on the floor, reading the Sunday papers, and she, she had been on a stool at the breakfast bar, watching how the dark heads increasingly leaned toward each other and ignoring the impulse to join them. Not looking up, Christina had asked her idly, "My-ka, were you ever a little girl?" Helena had snorted derisively, and Jemma, steeping tea in large mugs on the other side of the breakfast bar from Myka, had chuckled. Somehow, in her muddled defense that even FBI agents had to have been children at one time, Myka had fastened on a memory of flying kites with her father and Tracy on a long-ago Sunday afternoon. It was rare that a pleasant memory involving Warren Bering readily came to mind, and, for a moment, she was transfixed by the heat of the sun, Tracy's giggles as their kites threatened to collide, and their father's only mildly pained complaints that they needed to pay attention. She blinked as the intensity lessened; it had been a good day that day.

She gestured toward the finished kite. "Are you sure they're going to fly?"

"Aerodynamically, they're not all that complicated." More begrudgingly, Helena added, "Plus I got the instructions for making them off the Internet."

"The idea for the goat, too?"

"Jemma and Christina have developed an addiction to 'cute animals' videos," Helena said with an exasperation that sounded mostly assumed. "Christina is enamored of pygmy goats, she says she's going to ask Santa for one."

Myka cocked her head, assessing the kite against the wall, not as confident as Helena that they weren't, in fact, aerodynamically complicated. The kite was big, and the frame seemed small in comparison to the amount of fabric it was being asked to support. "Good idea to have a spare, in case these two don't fly as well as you think they will. Maybe you ought to make the spare smaller. "

"It's not a spare, Myka. It's your kite, and I need to know how you would like it decorated." As Myka stared at her in surprise, she said, "Christina fully expects you to participate, you know. Every night she wants confirmation that we'll have three kites ready to go on Sunday."

"Telling her to go fly a kite would be lost on her, I suppose." Myka found herself grinning, oddly pleased that Christina had thought to include her.

"And mean." Helena had picked up a pencil, tapping its eraser on the cloth. "She likes you. She asks after you." Blowing out a breath and tapping the pencil more aggressively, she asked, "So, what design do you want? And don't tell me you're fine with a blank piece of cloth. In that Appalachian corner of Colorado Springs you grew up in, you may have flown kites made out of your father's old t-shirts, but Christina will insist that your kite have some color to it."

Myka began to say "However you want to decorate it," but she realized that it would only fuel the impatience that Helena was expressing through her sighs and fidgeting. It occurred to her that Helena might resent any coziness that developed between her daughter and her guard; after all, it was hardly her choice to have supervised visits. In a slightly less imperfect world, Helena's visits would not only be more numerous but absent a third wheel as well. Or absent her presence, at least. She blushed, embarrassed that she had so forgotten herself and her assignment to believe that it mattered whether Christina liked her. Turning her burning face away from Helena, she offered, "I know my being with you and Christina on Sunday afternoons is like a thumb in your eye, so maybe Steve and I or another agent can alternate. Might reduce your frustration a little."

"Hardly. And you're not using that to get out of this Sunday." Myka turned back toward her, but Helena was the one looking away this time. "Christina has had enough changes to adjust to. Since she likes you and since you don't seem to hate being around children, I'd prefer that you remain our jailer. Unless we're cutting into your time with Mr. Martino." I

t was noticeably watered down from the other times Helena had referred to Sam, but Myka felt the acidic sting of "Mr. Martino." She decided not to respond to it. Joining Helena at the table, she looked down at the material. She envisioned a black kite with FBI stenciled in white in the center if she didn't give Helena something. "My favorite fictional character, if you remember. Otherwise I guess you could paint a package of Twizzlers."

"Are you challenging my memory, even after the grilled cheese?" Helena lifted her eyes, and Myka saw in them the familiar mocking glint. "I not only remember your favorite character, I know that you wanted to grow up to be just like him. But as rational as you pretend you are, I know what's underneath." Her lips slowly curved into a smile that wasn't fond, that was a universe away from the nakedly loving smile she reserved for Christina, and though Myka was responding, in spite of herself, to this smile, she wondered how she would respond if Helena gave her the other, meant the other. . . .

"Stop trying to play me," Myka said, steadily meeting Helena's gaze.

Helena didn't stop smiling, although it took a crooked line, becoming more sardonic than seductive. "And you weren't flirting with me, with a line like 'My favorite fictional character, if you remember?'" She tossed the pencil on the table. "But I'm still ready for a bed check, if that's what comes next."

"Not tonight and not by me."

The staircase wasn't quite the tunnel of darkness it had been earlier, Myka noticed, particularly that last stretch to the first floor. A floor lamp in the living room had been turned on and in the chair underneath sat Mrs. Frederic, still impeccably dressed at a quarter to 11:00. The rest of the room was in shadow and the lamplight, the weak amber glow of an energy-efficient light, only enhanced the depth of the shadows. But Mrs. Frederic didn't seem diminished by the contrast, she seemed larger, more imposing, and Myka couldn't unsee the image of a spider at the center of a web, a spider outfitted in a lilac dress suit and pumps to match.

"Sorry to disturb you," she said, instinctively slowing her descent as Mrs. Frederic approached her.

"I'm not disturbed," Mrs. Frederic replied, without a hint of a smile. "This is your job, isn't it? Checking up on Helena, on call at all hours of the day or night?"

There might not have been a slight pause between 'day' and 'night,' but Myka knew she was blushing as if there had been, as if she and Helena were teenagers, and she had been caught coming out of Helena's bedroom with a bad case of bedhead and a poorly buttoned shirt.

"I hope everything's all right," Mrs. Frederic said rather than asked, with the imperturbable confidence that nothing could have gone wrong without her finding out about it first. "I haven't known Helena long, but I find her a charming person."

Myka couldn't pinpoint what it was that had her bridling, whether it was the sense that behind that quiet, uninflected voice and the impassive expression that Mrs. Frederic was enjoying her obvious discomfort, the image of the well-dressed spider, or the fact that she was hungry and tired and having to make conversation with a woman, who, frankly, gave her the chills, but it had her responding testily, "I find her a felon."

"Of course you do" said as if it wasn't a matter of course at all, as if she knew that Myka found Helena to be many things, most of them unsettling in one way or another. With a dip of her head, as if to concur that it was late and past time to call it an evening, Mrs. Frederic opened the door for her.

"Good night, Mrs. Frederic."

"Happy kite-flying, Agent Bering."

...

Myka did manage to invent an excuse for why she and Helena needed to go to Hoboken. By a happy coincidence, although "happy" really wasn't the word for it because she had already had too many conversations with Bobby "B.O." Olson for her liking (he wasn't called B.O. because of his name), Bobby operated out of Hoboken. He was a small-time fence and a surprisingly reliable confidential informant; the FBI had turned to him before for information on who was behind various waves of counterfeit designer items, purses, watches, shoes, but not for leads on stolen jewelry that needed to be recut. Which was why Pete, after shouting "B.O.!" because he always liked to shout Bobby's nickname, regarded her with a skeptical squint.

"And you think he's the guy a bunch of golf-playing Ivy Leaguers are going to get to take their jewelry off their hands?" Pete was behind his desk, catching - most of the time - a golf ball he was continually tossing in the air. The office, every spring, started up a golf league, and Pete was always on it, despite being the worst golfer Myka had ever known. He was always eager to get out of the office on a Thursday afternoon to start the traffic crawl to the suburban golf course where they played, and that was why Myka had scheduled a 4:30 meeting with him.

"You have to admit that no one would think they'd go to Bobby." She knew it was a weak explanation. She was tempted to tell him the truth, what she knew of it, especially since Pete knew about Justice's plan to use Helena to go after Burdette, had, in fact, asked for the kind of update that Myka could now give him, but Helena didn't want anyone to know where they were going in Hoboken, she didn't want anyone to know about the place, whatever it was, except her (and Myka knew that Helena had told her only because she had had no choice). Myka knew where her allegiance lay, but she also knew that Justice wouldn't have an issue with her shutting her boss out if it got them closer to Burdette.

"We have never asked B.O. for information on stolen jewels. What's going on here, Mykes?" Pete missed the catch and the ball bounced off his desk, rolling past Myka's chair. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand.

"Helena kind of knows people who work with Bobby, and she thinks they might have handled the jewels. She says she can't approach them directly, but she thinks she might be able to talk to them through Bobby." Myka hadn't once lifted her eyes from the ball as she spun the lie. If she looked at Pete, she'd give herself away somehow, and he would notice it, he always did.

"Why are you in here then making her argument for her?" Pete held his hand out for the ball.

"Because she thought you'd be more likely to make the exception if the explanation came from me." She tossed the ball up and caught it before placing it in Pete's hand. "We don't have a lot to go on with these thefts, Lee and Jennifer were spinning their wheels, and that's why you put her on the case. Let her do what she thinks she needs to in order to solve it."

He squirmed in his chair as he stuffed the ball in a pocket of his pants. "Okay, talk to Parker. Have him. . . ." The ball secured, he began rapidly moving his fingers in the air to suggest a mad scientist at work. "You know, have him re-jigger all the monitor-y stuff in her monitor so we're not alerting the entire city that she's on the loose."

And that had been it. Pete had been on her heels as she left his office, anxious to take the elevator down to the fitness room where he could change into his golf pants and shirt, always in blinding shades of the primary colors. There had been no warnings, no additional squinted looks that suggested he still didn't believe her, just a "Let me know what you find out."

But that wouldn't be until next week or later because Bobby didn't answer the voice mail Myka had left on his phone, not Thursday night or Friday. Friday, she and Helena and Steve planned their trip to Barrington Academy, and by the end of their planning, Myka wished B.O. had called. In fact, she wished B.O. had called to demand that she come out to Hoboken and explain why the FBI thought he would know anything about stolen jewels. Because she would have gone out to Hoboken, and she would have stood downwind of him. Hell, she would have stood next to him in a closet and breathed in deeply. For hours.

They had talked about reinterviewing the victims to find out how many had gone to Barrington, but Helena feared that it might tip their hand too much to go back to them now, especially when they had nothing else in which they could bury the question. No positive news that a strong lead had been identified or that one of the jewels had been recovered. Maybe it was better to work it from the Barrington angle, but it had taken them awhile to decide on a plan. Did they go in straight, as FBI agents, or did they try to come up with a ruse? Helena was all for a ruse, not surprisingly, and she was the one who eventually suggested that she schedule an interview with an admissions officer to discuss what she . . . and her spouse . . . should do to see that Christina was accepted as a Barrington student when the time came. Perhaps she could charm the admissions officer into letting her look at some old yearbooks or introduce her to the head of the school's alumni office, someone or something that would provide her access to records of previous Barrington students.

"But it would go better, and faster, if all three of us had the same purpose for being there." Helena was fingering her lips, as if deep in thought, though Myka suspected she already knew what it was she wanted to suggest. "While it's logical that Steve and I should go in as Christina's parents, what are you going to be doing, Myka? Loitering in the hallway? Skulking somewhere on the grounds?"

Standing at the end of the conference room, where the windows fronted onto a steeply pitched but arresting view of the city's streets, arresting enough that Myka always forced herself to stand or sit with her back to them, she said, "I could be another parent looking to get my child accepted into the school. In fact, maybe it would work even better like that. After he or she shuffles the two of you off to the yearbooks, maybe I could ask to be directed to the alumni office. Or vice versa."

Helena's fingers had moved from her lips to her chin where she slowly rubbed the skin. But Myka wasn't convinced that she was considering any more than she had been pondering. It was all playacting. "The idea has its merits, but. . . I think there would be less cause for suspicion if all three of us went in at the same time. Not that there would be suspicion, necessarily, except that I happen to believe someone working at Barrington is involved. And he or she is going to be on the lookout for an oddity, something that doesn't seem to ring right. I want to be very careful." She arched her brows and then she smiled, almost gleefully. "Steve can remain Christina's father, but why don't you and I, Myka, pose as the happy couple?"

"I thought you were afraid of something not ringing right," Myka said, drifting to where Steve was sitting and looking with iron concentration at the empty water bottle between his hands. "What do you think about this?" She said it to the top of his head as he refused to look up.

"I'm thinking that you and Helena need to work it out. I'm just the dad."

"Myka, it's an hour or two at most of coupledom, and if there is a little tension, we can write it off as your wanting Christina to go to Phillips Exeter. That slightly startled look you can get, the hesitant smile. Lovely and high strung." Helena's smile was becoming more aggressive, and her eyes, almost canting over her cheekbones as the smile grew slyer and deeper, had a predatory light. "It's why I made you mine." A long pause. "If the admissions officer asks about how we met."

...

"Do you think I'm high strung?"

She and Sam were on Leena's balcony, a small cement patio that was just big enough to hold a few potted plants and two people, if one of them sat in the sole patio chair. Or if one of them was holding the other against him, as Sam was holding her, arms linked around her waist, head tucked into the crook of her neck. They had arrived late, Sam having worked into the evening on trial prep for a RICO case. She hadn't protested very sincerely since it had given her time to drive out to the island to do some reconnaissance on the park she and Helena and Christina were to fly kites in the next day.

It was a cute park, with the usual assortment of swings and play areas and picnic tables, not big but big enough to have a central green space in which people could fly kites or couples could spread blankets and sun themselves or teenagers could play frisbee. The parking lot was at the far end of the park. There could be no quick lifting of Christina and running with her to a car waiting in the lot. As if Helena would do something so cartoon-like anyway. All this was going to be was a simple outing for a child. Maybe Leena was right, and she was inventing excuses not to trust her, and maybe Helena was right, and she was seeing her as a villain through-and-through because it was easier to see her as that than as a person with flaws, big flaws, but someone recognizable, a mom trying to please her daughter.

As late in the afternoon as Myka was visiting, there weren't that many still in the park. At one end, a man was throwing a frisbee to his dog, a border collie with a blue bandanna as a collar, and at the other, a few teenagers were lackadaisically kicking around a soccer ball. Myka sat in the middle of the grass, legs crossed, letting the breeze push her hair into her face, listening for the sounds of her sister's laughter and the flapping of kites in the wind. She hadn't worried then about being high strung or playing Helena's wife or discovering what Helena had painted on her kite. It had been enough to sit, her eyes closed, and hear the voices intermingle, those of the man calling to his dog, the teenagers joking with each other and Tracy's "Myka, leave my kite alone!" and her father's "Keep it steady, Myka. There, there you go."

"Leena's the therapist," Sam rumbled against her neck. "Why don't you ask her?"

Because, first, she would ask me what I thought 'high strung' meant. Because, second, she would ask me if I thought it was a bad thing. Because at no point would she ever tell me what she thought. "Because I would rather ask you. You've seen me in all sorts of contexts, in other words, at my absolute worst. Morning hair, morning breath. Meeting your parents." She said the last as a joke, but Sam's parents, especially his father, put her on edge. She had never before met anyone who had had to fill every moment of every day with purpose. From the moment he got up at 5:00 in the morning until he turned in at precisely 9:45 in the evening, Frank Martino never let himself take a breath and he didn't let anyone else around him take a breath either. Jogging, cycling, putting in a few hours at the consulting business he ran in his ostensible retirement, and that was all before noon, he knew if you cracked a book open or turned on the TV. Then he had you by your arms, pulling you up from the sofa and yanking you with him to the golf course or the tennis court. He had been the CEO of a number of mortgage companies, and Sam had grown up hearing the taunt "Keep up or eat my dust." He was still trying to keep up.

"You're what I call focused, and I like it." He kissed her below her ear and squeezed her harder against him. "I also like the rest of you, undressed. What do you say we tell Leena that we had a wonderful time and go back to my place? I haven't seen you . . . you blew off dinner with me this week."

"I didn't blow off dinner with you. I asked for a rain check on it because Helena wanted to talk about Burdette."

"The other woman who's on my mind," Sam teased, "but I prefer to think about you." He rubbed her stomach gently. "Has she come up with anything yet?"

"We're working on something. If it's viable, I'll let you know." It was more or less what she had told Pete when he had called her into his office on Friday for the update he had demanded earlier in the week. He had wanted something more concrete but had reluctantly decided not to press her for more, giving her the same skeptical squint he had when she had told him of her "plan" to talk Bobby Olson about the missing jewels. She couldn't tell whether Sam was squinting at her, but she heard his sigh.

"You need to give me something soon, Myka."

Myka leaned forward against his arms and looked through the patio door into the apartment. A lot of the guests had left, but some were playing what looked like Trivial Pursuit on a coffee table in the living room, and Leena herself was chatting with a man Myka vaguely remembered seeing at other get-togethers Leena had hosted. She wondered if Leena was dating him. Leena was a wonderful catch who had yet to be caught, or if someone had caught her, she wasn't admitting it. Myka wished she could manage a romantic relationship so casually and unself-consciously. Couldn't she just date someone, have dinner, go to a show, sleep with him if they both felt like it, and not feel as if she couldn't breathe until she saw him next or, alternately, suspect that she would forget his name fifteen minutes after leaving his bedroom? She wanted something that didn't consume her but wasn't also something that she kicked into a corner so she didn't have to look at it too closely. Millions of years ago when she had been with Mark and then with Rachel, and even with Sam those first few months after she had joined the FBI, it had been like that. Easy, fun, and while she had occasionally entertained the hope it would turn into something serious, possibly permanent, she wasn't crushed by the thought that it might not. But she didn't know how to do that anymore. Sometimes she couldn't believe that she and Sam had actually married because she wasn't capable of that kind of commitment; she couldn't trust that the hand someone held out to her wouldn't be retracted, leaving her pedaling air over an abyss. Yet, at the time, marrying him had seemed no big deal . . . .

_She imagined that this must have been the convalescence described in nineteenth century novels, when a character was felled by an illness that, today, antibiotics or antivirals would clear up in a few weeks but in 1860 or 1880 kept her bedridden for months. Pale, weak, but having survived, the heroine would move from the bed to a chaise lounge where she would rest for another six months. Eventually she might creep downstairs to a sunroom or a garden where she would sit in a wheeled chair with a blanket drawn up to her neck. Wars would have been fought, politicians elected, and family members born and buried, but she would have little recollection of the events and even less interest in them._

_Myka hadn't been able to take to her bed. There had been the initial investigation of the Marston Gallery thefts, and then, when the open secret of her relationship with Helena had come to the attention of the assistant directors, there had been the investigation of her. It had lasted forever, or so it seemed, although Pete kept insisting that it had been only a couple of weeks. But the interrogations, and they were interrogations, went on for hours. Agents had searched Myka's apartment and her parents' home. "In case I hid paintings in the bedroom closet," she had told her mother, her voice heavy with sarcasm, her mother's heavy with tears. Her parents had been "interviewed" by field agents as well, and when Myka's father got on the phone, all but accusing her of working in tandem with Helena on the theft, she knew she wouldn't forget the call for a very long time. When she had finally convinced him that she had been as misled as everyone else, he had hung up on her. She'd hear that dial tone, angry and contemptuous in her ear, for forever too._

_The investigation concluded, her innocence vindicated, Myka was restored to her (old) position, but the suspicions lingered. Not about whether she had been in on the robbery all along but about her fitness as an agent, and she couldn't blame the assistant directors and other agents for feeling that way. She wasn't sure she was agent material either. Bates had been "reassigned" to a field office in Illinois; she had only been suspended. She supposed she should count herself lucky, but she didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything. She worked, she ate when she remembered to, and she occasionally slept. That was her routine for months, then a year, and then another. The only people she saw outside work were Pete and Sam. But Pete and his wife had just had their first child, and he couldn't spend much time with her. A beer nursed at a bar for an hour or two every once in awhile, that was her time with Pete. Not that she was much company. Their conversations were mainly about sports because Pete did 90% of the talking. Myka drank and listened to him and thought there had to be some word for the numbness she felt, some multi-syllabic German word that Freud had invented and which had since fallen out of favor, like Freud himself, but which would describe her perfectly. Because she was a mess. Who the fuck would want to take her on?_

_It had taken her several more months to realize that Sam wasn't scared of the mess she was. He cooked her dinner, he watched old movies with her. He was a better friend than he had been a boyfriend, and when, out of some combination of loneliness and gratitude, she had asked him to spend the night, in her bed this time, not on the sofa as he had done before, she hadn't felt that it was a mistake. They didn't talk about what was happening between them, by mutual agreement it seemed, and though Myka recognized the return of the old attraction, it wasn't the same. She cared for him, she might have even begun to love him, but it wasn't how she had loved Helena._

_If Sam felt the lack or felt cheated or short, he never said. He acted as if he was happy. They spent most of their time together, but neither suggested the other move in. Over Christmas of that year, Myka had gone to Colorado Springs. It was never a pleasant visit, but the visit was further marred by her mother's quiet confession that Myka's father had been diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer's. The memory lapses weren't obvious to most, but they were occurring more frequently. Myka had noticed little change except that her father seemed more unsure of himself, looking to her mother for confirmation of the smallest things, where the ketchup went in the refrigerator, when they had packed themselves in the car and gone to the Grand Canyon on a family vacation. The one bright spot had been seeing Tracy, who had entered her last trimester and sought distraction, usually from Myka, to keep her mind off the pain in her back and her legs, which was all "from carrying this bowling ball everyone keeps promising me will turn into a baby," she would claim in an aggrieved tone that wasn't very convincing._

_Myka had been more than ready to return to the city when Sam literally showed up on the Berings' doorstep on New Year's Eve day, flashing two plane tickets to Reno at her. From there they would drive to Lake Tahoe and ski and. . . ._

" _You're an incredibly bad skier," he said, having watched her ski down a relatively easy slope. She had fallen at least twice._

" _Pretty horrible," she cheerfully agreed, raising her visor. It was snowing, and she blinked as the wind chased snowflakes into her eyes._

" _How did that happen? Your dad kept telling me the story that a bum knee was the only thing that kept him off the Olympic ski team."_

_He had told Sam that story twice when they had seen in the new year in the Berings' cluttered living room, drinking eggnog, but Sam had politely listened to the retelling without letting on that he had heard it before only a couple of hours earlier. "Well, that and talent," Myka said, laughing. She looked down at her skis, one of which was already crossed over the other. "I could never get my arms and legs working together, and my balance was always off."_

" _And yet you were able to learn how to fence," Sam said dryly, "because that doesn't require coordination or balance."_

_She responded with a quirk of her lips. "Yeah, I've got a ton of issues, so what are you going to do about it?"_

" _I'm going to marry you." He looked shocked as the words escaped him, and then he grinned. "I'm going to marry you," he repeated. "Let's go back to Reno and just do it. I mean, why the hell not?"_

_Because I'm not sure I love you enough. Because I'm not sure you love me enough. But she was tired of feeling numb and today, today, she turned her head slowly, taking in the snow, the other skiers, and, finally, Sam, who was still looking surprised but happy, and she felt . . . good. So, why the hell not?_

She stepped away from him but hooked a finger around one of his belt loops and pretended to drag him to the patio door. "Let's go tell Leena good-bye, and then I'll let you have your way with me."

...

It was too windy for kites, but she and Helena gamely let the wind catch at them and snap them aloft, a pygmy goat, sunflowers, and Sherlock Holmes. Myka had half-expected to see the bowl haircut and split-fingered greeting of Spock, but Helena had remembered. She wouldn't have minded Spock, he came in second only to Sherlock, but she was more pleased than she wanted to be that it was Sherlock on her kite. The explanation of who the strange man on My-ka's kite was went over Christina's head, but her serious nod as Helena described him as a "super-duper FBI agent, almost as good as Myka" had Myka stifling a laugh and wanting to hug her at the same time.

A sudden gust caused the pygmy goat's frame to break, and the kite fell to the ground. Christina's face was just as crumpled, but she didn't scream or cry. Instead she stroked the goat's painted head and murmured in singsong, "Sorry, goatie, sorry, sorry, sorry."

Myka held the other two kites, while Helena knelt beside her daughter. "Come on, pumpkin. I need your help to fly my kite. Will you help me?"

Christina shrugged. Sighing, Myka walked the kites over to Helena. "Hold these." She jogged toward her car in the parking lot. There had been many tense and frustrating minutes fitting Christina's car seat into the backseat, and Helena had almost worn her sunflowers kite as a necklace, but with a maximum of swearing they had finally gotten the seat hooked in, Jemma and Christina watching their efforts from a kitchen window.

In the trunk, behind a strategically placed emergency kit, bin rather, was a bag with three cheap plastic kites Myka had bought earlier in the morning after leaving Sam's apartment. The fact that she had spent any time choosing them from the drugstore's limited selection of kites was an embarrassment, and even more embarrassing was the acknowledgment that most of the indecision had been about what kite to get Helena. Too late now for regrets. She pulled out the bag and slammed the trunk door. As she jogged back to where the two were sitting in the grass, the other two kites no longer in the air, she felt light, unburdened in a way that she hadn't felt since. . . she couldn't remember how long, but a long time. As a couple of men walking past her checked her out, she flashed them a smartalecky grin and increased her pace.

Christina welcomed her with a loud and cheery "Myka!," Goatie apparently forgotten, as Myka sank onto her heels beside them and began handing out kites. She clapped her hands and cooed over her One Direction kite, while Helena rolled her eyes. Helena stared at the design of her kite as she unrolled the plastic and saw the shock of green hair and maniacal grin of the old-fashioned DC Comics' Joker and started laughing. She peered over Myka's shoulder at Myka's Batman kite, and her laughter grew louder. "I would have preferred Catwoman," she stage-whispered.

"I know," Myka said, "I searched for one." It was true, she had, every kite, twice over.

They flew the replacement kites until the wind sheared through them and sent them tumbling, in tatters, to the ground. There was still time for Helena to push Christina on a swing before they needed to return her to her grandmother, and Myka commandeered a see-saw and sat on one end as Helena pushed Christina into higher and faster arcs. Christina didn't mind, the few shrieks erupting from her sounding excited rather than fearful. When they walked to the parking lot, Christina stumbling tiredly between them, she had one hand in the firm grip of her mother's. After rubbing her eyes with the other, she searched for Myka's hand and clutched it. Myka darted a glance at Helena, ready to disentangle her fingers from Christina's.

Helena looked down at her daughter's and Myka's interlocked hands and then looked ahead, her lips curving in the faintest of smiles


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helena and Myka on a case! Well, sort of. The train carrying the plot is inching out of the station . . .

Helena had arranged for an interview with the head of admissions at Barrington Academy, and the day of the interview Myka was called in for an emergency meeting with Pete and an attorney from Justice about one of her previous cases. It had been a good assignment as assignments went, a clear suspect, a relatively unbroken chain of evidence, and, just as important to its success, no mistakes by local law enforcement that would result in key evidence or the case itself being thrown out of court. Or so Myka had thought. As she hurried to Pete's office, attracting a few stares and hiked eyebrows, she expected that Steve and Helena were in the midst of a commute that, despite being in the opposite direction, would be nearly as tortuous at the one to the city; what had once been a Connecticut farming village was now only another exceedingly expensive bedroom community almost in view from the 90th floor of a skyscraper but hours by car. If her meeting ended soon enough, she would join them. If it didn't, she would have worn a sweater set and skirt, which wouldn't have looked out of place, or out of time, on the set of a Rock Hudson and Doris Day movie, for no reason. No good reason, anyway. She had spent far too much time last night, a grilled cheese that wasn't as good as the one Helena had made alternately clamped between her teeth and placed on a dinner plate, evaluating which of her outfits was the most appropriate for an interview she and her fake wife would have about the 'school of choice' for a daughter who wasn't hers.

The meeting with Pete and the attorney from Justice ended quickly enough for her to make the drive to Barrington with a reasonable hope that she might be only a few minutes late for the interview but the meeting's conclusion had left a sour taste in her mouth. The defense attorney had managed to successfully argue for the suppression of some of the evidence, enough that the outcome of the trial was in doubt. For once, Justice hadn't come to harangue them but to plead for a reexamination of the case files in the hopes that something might have inadvertently been left out. Myka was on the verge of volunteering when Pete quieted her with a look before she could open her mouth; he informed the attorney that a new agent would have to be assigned to the review. Myka wasn't sure what frustrated her more, that a seemingly airtight case had deflated in front of her or that she would have to endure being Helena's wife for the day.

As she clattered down the hallway of Barrington's administrative building, her heels beating out an uneven tap dance on the marble floor, she spied Helena and Steve outside an office halfway down the hall, and she knew then that the collapse of the case bothered her less than the prospect of pretending to be Helena's wife. Gesturing toward her, Helena was already curving her arm in anticipation of the embrace that a wife – a real, loving one – might want to greet her spouse with, and that the spouse – a real, loving one – might want to return. But this was just some needless theater, in Myka's opinion. Trying to hide her reluctance behind an overly bright smile, Myka didn't let the smile dim when Helena wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her close.

"Darling," Helena said warmly, indulgently, nodding her head toward a middle-aged woman in a sweater set remarkably similar to Myka's but graced with a string of pearls that Myka would probably never have the money to own in her lifetime. "This is Mrs. Carmichael, and she's going to tell us why Barrington may be just the school for Christina when she's a little older." She pressed a kiss against Myka's temple. "I love it when you bring out the Deborah Kerr look," she murmured, "so very prim and proper, though I can't remember seeing you in that twin set before."

Myka's smile tensed as she suppressed a surge of irritation. "It's been in our closet for ages, sweetheart. You need to pay more attention." As Helena gave her a look of wounded innocence, Steve shook his head in amusement.

Mrs. Carmichael took another glance at Myka's outfit and her somewhat messily upswept hair. "I can see the resemblance," she said uncertainly, "but I have to admit that it's all about Cary Grant for me when _An Affair to Remember_ is on." She welcomed them into her office, which, given Barrington's neo-Georgian exteriors - the red brick, white columns, and banks upon banks of windows that seemed required elements on any campus - Myka was expecting to display a similar Augustan authority, overburdened with wood and featuring more than a few busts of ancient philosophers or emperors. However, it was an altogether warmer, more casual room, dominated not by a desk or bookshelves but by a seating area in front of a fireplace, which though unlit and scrupulously clean of ashes, looked well used. A tea service was set on a table in front a long, low-slung sofa, and Mrs. Carmichael invited them to sit down while she poured tea - coffee for Steve and Myka -as she shared Barrington Academy's origins. Before Myka could impose a certain amount of distance between her and Helena by taking one of the chairs, Helena discreetly pulled her to the sofa. Sitting far too closely to each other for her comfort, Myka couldn't move away, not without Mrs. Carmichael noticing, and, as though sensing her unease and frustration could be ratcheted up a little more, Helena possessively rested her hand on Myka's knee.

Sipping her coffee when what she wanted to do was to grind her heel into Helena's foot, which peeked from beneath the monitoring-covering drape of the leg of her pantsuit, Myka tried to pay attention to the conversation about class size and course offerings, but Helena's hand burned into her knee. Steve interjected a question about tuition, and, while noting that Barrington's tuition and fees might not seem competitive with those of its peers, Mrs. Carmichael said with just the right amount of pride, not so much that it could be considered overweening or that she could be considered devoid of self-awareness, that Barrington had no peer. Hastily then, as if to underscore that Barrington's superiority was based on the quality of its students and not their parents' money, she added that scholarships and other types of financial aid were available to those students in need of assistance. Helena shrugged, implicitly suggesting that money was no issue, her hand unmoving on Myka's knee, but Myka was focused on the cover photograph of a brochure that Mrs. Carmichael had given to them, a "rainbow of diversity" shot of students in front of the admissions building, as unreal as it was oddly arresting, and Myka heard herself almost angrily asking, "Everything here smacks of privilege, and you're asking us to believe that the income of a student's family doesn't matter? That a kid who gets a financial aid package to attend the equivalent of a high school isn't treated differently?"

Helena's hand was squeezing her knee now, not affectionately. "Darling, perhaps you can lower your Occupy Wall Street banner and let yourself be occupied by a sense of humor. Having a bit of school spirit does not necessarily translate into a disavowal of the social safety net."

Myka wasn't sure why she had become angry or why such a deliberately inoffensive picture had offended her. The disappointment of having a case fall apart, the tension of pretending to be Helena's wife, hell, maybe even the ridiculous matron-in-waiting outfit she was wearing, all needles working their way into her skin. She was a product of the Colorado Springs public school system and a family who lived over a bookstore because they didn't have the money for a house. In truth, she knew nothing of the lives of the people who could afford to send their children to Barrington. Sometimes she arrested people like them, sure, but they couldn't _all_ be scumbags, and they weren't the ones who had shrunk from sitting next to her in class or the lunch room, as if her thick-lensed glasses, brown bag lunches, and Russian novel-reading were symptoms of a communicable disease. The kids who had scorned her had had waitresses, telemarketers, deliverymen, and cashiers for parents. It was senseless this wallowing in self-pity; she was no longer sixteen years old, and . . . none of this was real. Why was she having to remind herself of that? She and Helena weren't a couple, and they weren't planning to send Christina to Barrington. She was supposed to be playacting, and instead she was a brooding study in cashmere.

She glared at the brochure one last time, at the perfect adolescent models with their clear skin, 20/20 vision, and blindingly white grins, before assuming an apologetic smile that was partly sincere, and saying to Mrs. Carmichael, "Sorry, Christina's being raised with a silver spoon, but I was raised with a stainless steel one, and sometimes I let it show." Thinking that she had never smiled so much in one setting, or with such effort, Myka laced her fingers through Helena's and squeezed back, hard.

"Perhaps," Helena said, narrowing her eyes at Myka before turning to Mrs. Carmichael, "you know of some former Barrington students or parents of students currently attending the school who would be willing to talk to us? I think it would be helpful to hear their impressions, and it might put my wife's mind more at ease."

Mrs. Carmichael nodded as if she had been expecting the question all along. "Bryce DeWitt is in charge of our alumni affairs, and he's a Barrington graduate. Let me see if he's in." As she rose, she gazed down at their cups of tea and coffee, a sardonic expression fleetingly overtaking her face. "Don't let it get cold." She paused, winking at Myka. "It's all fair trade."

Once she left the room, Helena flexed her hand to free it from Myka's grip. "Thank you oh so much for insulting the school, the students, and their parents," she said in an acid hiss, rubbing her fingers.

"I'm a little off my game this morning," Myka responded with a not-quite-apology. "But it doesn't matter now, she's doing what we hoped she would." Feeling Helena's glare, she drank more of her coffee.

"So what did the children of privilege do to you when you were a teenager that prompted that outburst?" Helena was still irritated, but there was something that Myka could mistake for curiosity or, if she was truly willing to make a fool of herself, sympathy. She tried to find refuge in meeting Steve's eyes, but he was studiously surveying the room.

"Nothing," she finally said. Not that her high school had had that many children of privilege, most of them attending the private schools or living in school districts with a much higher per capita income than her own, but there had been a few. Golden, weren't they always golden? Literally golden. Even though tanning was a relic from previous decades and a cancerous one at that, they had been tan, their hair tawny and sun-streaked. They had been impervious to the gibes and put-downs that the ranks of students below them had futilely, enviously hurled upward like spears. She couldn't help but be aware of them, even the Tolstoyan doorstoppers she read couldn't block them from view.

He had been one of them or had learned to mimic their look so perfectly that he could be mistaken for one of them. The same tawny hair, although he was old enough to have to style it to disguise a bald spot, the same flawless tan, the teeth so white and even in a professionally welcoming smile that they had to be veneers. "Linda was called away. I'm Bryce. Why don't you come with me and I'll show you around. I want you to feel like you've always known Barrington." He was dressed in what could have passed for a school uniform, had Barrington still enforced such a rigorous dress code: blue blazer, gray slacks, white shirt.

Myka glanced swiftly at Helena. The curiosity, the incipient sympathy, whatever emotion had gentled the glares and frown was gone. Instead she seemed intensely alert, her shoulders thrown back, her eyes fixed on Bryce DeWitt, as if she sensed he was prey, or another predator. They followed him out of Mrs. Carmichael's office, out of the admissions building, and onto the campus. Myka had been in too much of a rush when she had arrived to pay any attention to the grounds, but gazing around her now, she noticed that the grass was long and in need of mowing and, between the buildings, so crossed and crisscrossed by students that it had been worn down to the dirt.

Hearing her thoughts, or so it seemed, DeWitt flashed her a deliberately disarming grin. "You're thinking 'they charge the students an arm and a leg to go here and they have no one to mow the grass.' C'mon, admit it, it's all right." When Myka continued to give him the blandest of expressions, he tilted his head in a gesture that might have been concession or a silent entreaty to play along with him. After a few seconds, he straightened his neck, the grin likewise moderating. "We want our students to think of Barrington as they would their home, we want it to look lived in, comfortable."

Helena was standing beside him. When he had invited them on the tour, she had casually taken up a position next to him, and they had slowly but steadily drawn ahead of Myka and Steve. Myka recognized the slanted smile, the quick, light touches on his arm, the ready laugh. Steve had leaned in, whispering, "She looks like she wants to eat him. Should we intervene?"

Myka minutely shook her head. She hadn't seen Helena in action like this in, well, more than eight years. It varied by investigation, by the victims and suspects they questioned, sometimes Helena would act aloof or distracted, allowing Myka to take charge, at other times, she would charge to the fore, acting flirtatiously or aggressively. She wore the mask she thought would be the most effective in eliciting the information they needed. At least Myka thought they had all been masks, that the real Helena had been reserved for her, until Houston, until she had met David and Hilary Marston.

_It was weeks after the theft; after Helena had disappeared; after Myka had returned to the cramped confines of her own apartment, the empty, echoing space of the loft no longer an expression of Helena's taste, an aesthetic preference, but the truth of who she was had Myka only been wise enough to see it, an illusion, a dream, her own desires cleverly, deliberately reflected back to her. It was after she had been interrogated, investigated, suspended and then reinstated, brought back but never fully embraced, maybe, in part, because she held herself tight and unyielding within the agency's arms. She didn't want to be back, felt she didn't deserve to be back, but she had nowhere else to go._

_Bates was on his way out, but until the transfer was finalized, he was taking his misery out on everyone. Myka accepted her assignments uncomplainingly, although the majority of them involved serving as another team's back-up, their assistant, their dogsbody. Pete, who had already been tapped to replace Bates, at least on an interim basis, was spending most of his time in Washington, attending training. Or that was the reason given for his absences. He called her every day in between classes or meetings or whatever it was his new bosses were having him do. Sometimes he explained his calls by saying that he was driving a pregnant Amanda crazy, at other times he said he wanted to know if the agents had risen in revolt and shipped Bates off to Illinois ahead of schedule, but they both knew why he was calling. Myka wanted to find it comforting, but she couldn't. The fact that he wasn't there with her, that he wasn't her partner any longer, it was another reminder of how badly she had fucked everything up._

_That was why when Bates called her into his office and told her he was sending to her Houston, again, she knew it was only punishment. On his desk, already cleared of the photos of his family and the small mantel clock honoring his 15 years of service to the agency, only the dust-free spots marking where they had been, there was a slim report. He pushed it over to her (there was no sitting at a conference table with Bates, the hierarchy always had to be observed), grimly indicating that she should read it. She skimmed the first page, mainly a bullet-point list of the artworks stolen from the Marston Gallery, which she knew by heart. Paintings by Cezanne and Monet, Matisse and Picasso, Pollock and Rothko. The thieves had clumsily removed some of the paintings from their frames, leaving behind tatters and scraps that were stuck to the wood. The agency had sent them as well as anything else that might hold DNA or fingerprints for analysis. She had already seen the results of the tests, which had found nothing conclusive, and wondered why Bates was giving her another version of the report until she flipped to the second page. This was about a different analysis. Those tatters and scraps had undergone tests to determine their age, and the Cezanne and the Picasso had been painted within the past few years, not over a hundred years ago. When the theft at the gallery had occurred, there had been a special showing of the Marston family's collection; several of the works that had been stolen had been theirs. But if the report she was reading was correct, those paintings had actually been stolen much earlier, when they were still in the Marston family home._

" _You're going to talk to the Marston family again because they were in on it. Some of them, anyway." Bates had removed his glasses, knuckling his eyes. He pushed the glasses back on, his eyes, normally unremarkable in their size and color, now inflamed, like the rest of him, Myka glumly supposed._

_She wasn't any more welcome in the Houston field office. Maybe they knew of her relationship to Helena and the subsequent investigation of her – gossip, if it was about something sufficiently scandalous or shocking, had a way of hopping among the offices – but more likely it was that the agents had no enthusiasm for questioning members of the Marston family as suspects. Months before, when she and Pete had worked with the office on the theft, agents had bent over backward to provide them assistance. Such a high profile heist had been an embarrassment, and they were eager to help solve it; there had been no foot-dragging about questioning the Marston family then, they were victims not co-conspirators. Myka remembered the interview with Robert Marston and his wife, Cecily. He had been ashen, and he had fumbled for answers, hardly giving the appearance of a forceful oil company CEO. Mrs. Marston's responses had been just as frustratingly vague, but less from the shock of the theft than from a concern for her husband's health, which had been well-founded since Mr. Marston had suffered an incapacitating series of strokes only days after the interview. Their children, David and Hilary, they had interviewed briefly, and Myka, despite the pride she took in remembering even the most trivial aspects of a case, could barely bring them to mind. She recalled that they had looked much alike, handsome . . . golden._

_They would be the Marstons she and the agent assigned to her would interview. Robert Marston was too sick to be questioned and his wife was refusing all requests, claiming that she couldn't be away from her husband's bedside. Interview, the agent-in-charge had emphasized in her office, looking first at Myka and then looking harder at Myka's temporary partner, as if to underscore that it was his responsibility to ensure that this unwanted agent from the East Coast didn't overstep the line. Interview, not interrogate. He had all but nodded, this Anthony Williams, a former lineman for Texas A &M, and he towered over Myka, all 6'6'' of him. He had a surprisingly soft voice for such a big man, although that soft voice made it clear in the curtness with which he directed her to the workspace they would share that he held no enthusiasm for his latest assignment. He was the youngest agent in the office from what Myka could tell, and his desk was decorated with Aggie memorabilia. _

_He was the one who contacted David Marston, pleasantly, softly requesting time for an interview, to discuss "new facts in the case," passing his hand over the shaved skin of his head, which gleamed like polished walnut under the office lighting, as he spoke. David Marston had replaced his father as CEO of the company, and it was apparent that he was using his increased responsibilities as an excuse to get out of the interview. But to his credit, Anthony was firm, the soft voice never becoming any less soft, but he began hunching his shoulders as he pressed David Marston over the phone, as though he was preparing to block all objections and protests back to the Gulf of Mexico, if necessary, and eventually Mr. Marston conceded to the interview, agreeing to bring Hilary with him._

_On the drive to Marston Oil, she and Anthony were silent, until they pulled into the parking lot. As soon as he turned off the ignition, Myka was opening the door, but he touched her arm, gently holding her back. "You've spoken to the Marstons before." It was a question that he turned into a statement, trying to remind her of some fact about them that should be readily apparent, but she only stared back at him, impatiently._

" _Texas has a small town mentality when it comes to its big families. Everyone around here knows of the Marstons. Big Daddy Robert, First Lady Cecily . . . and their two spoiled kids. You look like you want to charge in there and nail them to the wall."_

" _Because they're guilty," Myka's tone was as impatient as her look. "The Marston paintings were forged, and someone in the Marston family hired Helena Wells to do it. It wasn't Robert, and I doubt it was Cecily. The theft at the gallery, David and Hilary are trying to double dip. They sold the real paintings behind their parents' backs and now they're planning to collect on the insurance for the stolen forgeries."_

" _We're going to go in there, and they're going to play with us, you know that, right?" This time he phrased it as a question, not a statement. He wasn't reminding her, he was telling her something he wasn't sure she had figured out. "Doesn't matter whether they did it. If their father recovers, he'll sweep it under the rug. As for Cecily, David and Hilary are her babies. The Marstons'll deal with any transgressions on their own, they won't bring the law into it."_

" _The insurance company that's going to have to pay out on the gallery's losses may have a different opinion," Myka said stubbornly._

_Anthony laughed without humor. "You may have interviewed the Marstons, but you don't know them."_

_They met with the Marstons in a conference room off David's office. David kept them waiting for fifteen minutes before he entered, smiling but offering no apology for the delay. Hilary was even later, David had had to call her from the conference room, reminding her that they had a meeting with the FBI. "She's busy with Marston Oil's new public relations campaign," he said, looking down at his Blackberry and reading his messages. When Hilary came into the room, Myka was struck again by the resemblance between brother and sister. Her hair was longer than his, his features were hers but larger, more blunt and aggressive, but their eyes, an amber virtually the same color as their hair, and the honeyed Southern accents were the same. The smugness, which had been missing from Myka's first meeting with them, was the same as well._

_When Myka asked them if they knew Helena Wells, they smiled at each other, the same sly smile, before David shook his head. Of her, yes, Hilary lazily corrected. Friends of the family had hired Ms. Wells to repair some damage to a painting they had recently acquired. "David, you know, it was possible that we did meet her. The Grants threw that party, you remember? There was that gorgeous woman, I think your jaw dropped to the floor, and the Grants said that she was their specialist. . . ."_

" _That's right." David grinned at his sister. "It's coming back to me now. The two of you had quite the conversation, tucked away in a corner. Too bad we never saw her after that night."_

_She grinned back, and that's when Myka knew. Not that they had hired Helena, she had known that from the moment she had read the report, but that one, or the both of them, had slept with her. It didn't surprise her, or so Myka told herself. But then Hilary turned the grin on her, as if she and Myka and David were all sharing the same secret. "Ms. Wells worked in your office as a consultant, that's what we heard. You must know better than anyone, I'm sure, just how charming she could be." The grin became triumphant. And that's when Myka knew what she didn't want to know, ever. That the Marstons had known about her, not since the theft but before it, long before it. Helena had lain in bed with one or the other of them and told Hilary (or David) about the love-besotted FBI agent, reassured him (or her) that no one would tumble to their plan because she was doing her part by tumbling Agent Bering._

_Characters in novels would discover something so shocking or devastating that they couldn't literally take it in, and they would rush to the bathroom or the nearest trash can to vomit it up. She didn't feel like vomiting, she felt like she was drowning. The knowledge wasn't weighing on her stomach, it was spreading through her too fast for her to expel it. She couldn't run to the executive washroom or throw up in the conference room wastebasket because it was filling her lungs, closing over her head. And if she looked up, she wouldn't see Hilary or David looking down at her, confident in the belief that they were untouchable, she would see Helena, regretful but resolved. Con games didn't have players; they had winners and losers, and Helena had determined before she knew there was an Agent Bering to dupe that she would be the winner._

_She must not have hesitated long because Anthony hadn't taken over the questioning, and Myka, for one of the few times in her life, was grateful for her father. The constant realization that she was falling short, that she was a disappointment had become white noise, always in the background, but never so intrusive that she couldn't focus on the task at hand. And she still had questions to ask the Marstons. So she asked them, and it wasn't true that you couldn't talk when all you could breathe in was water. You could talk and listen and nod and still be drowning._

_When they finished the interview, she and Anthony, and returned to their car, he had had to look only once at her white, pinched face. "Now you know what talking to the Marstons is really like," he said, his soft voice barely above a whisper._

_He couldn't know what she knew, what she and David and Hilary knew about each other, but he had been right and she had been wrong. She would return to the city, and she would spend her free time, what little she allowed herself, putting it all together, the scheme to rob the parents and then to rob the insurance company. But it would be for her satisfaction only, if the perverse pride she would take in uncovering just how stupid she had been could be called satisfaction. She would never be able to fully implicate the Marstons, brother and sister, in the forgery or in the theft, not enough to bring charges against them. Helena was clever enough and the Marstons were rich enough to have seen to that. Bates wasn't punishing her by grinding her face into the fact that the true criminals were out of her reach, he was punishing her by inviting her to never stop punishing herself._

She hadn't thought she was looking, staring at Helena, but Helena had turned away from DeWitt, and those dark eyes were searching hers, anxiously, even beseechingly as Myka might have been tempted to characterize the gaze, if she and Helena weren't who they were, if they had had a different history . . . in a different lifetime. It was almost as if, for those few moments when she had been sitting in that conference room again, hearing the Marstons laughing at her – despite the fact that there had been no actual laughter, just the constant smiles – Helena had known where she had gone and was asking her, with those uncertain, flickering glances, if she was truly back. Myka resisted the impulse to shrug. She didn't revisit that Houston conference room often, but she didn't have to; she always carried it with her. Feeling Steve's arm hooking around hers, she trained her attention on him, steadying herself, more often than she would ever let him know, in the openness and honesty of his face.

The tour DeWitt gave them was abbreviated, a rapid in-and-out of one of the academic buildings, a circuit around the exterior of a dormitory (the interior was off-limits while school remained in session), and then a brisk walk to the athletic fields. He began shepherding them back to the admissions office, and though Helena wasn't letting up on the coy observations and the casual patting of DeWitt's arm, she would throw her head back more frequently, confirming that Myka was within view. The animation she displayed with DeWitt was belied by the seriousness with which she focused on Myka, uncertainty still evident in the way her eyes lingered, seeking reassurance.

Now Myka did shrug, irritably, and Helena took it as an opportunity to give DeWitt a tiny push, saying laughingly, "I've been neglecting my wife." Dropping back to fall into step with Myka and Steve and curling her arm around Myka's free one, she informed them with a show of casualness, "Bryce is going to take us to his office and give us the names of some former students we might call. Just what we were hoping for." She affectionately leaned into Myka's shoulder. It might have been real, but Myka disengaged her arm from Helena's, giving Steve a fleetingly apologetic smile as she released his too. If she increased her stride, she could catch up with DeWitt, whose carefully gauged charm was a form of insincerity she could accept.

His office was on the second floor of the admissions building and was as much school museum as alumni office. Framed photographs of the drama department's productions shared space on the walls with photographs of some of Barrington's more prestigious alumni. Display cases held trophies from various academic and athletic competitions and yet more photographs of graduating classes, stretching back decades. DeWitt led them between the cases to his desk, massive and antique – "the desk of Barrington's longest-serving president," he informed them with a mixture of both pride and wryness, "back when you held the same job for 40 years" – and turned on a sleek, slim laptop that looked as small as an old-fashioned cigarette case on the desk. Tapping a few keys and waiting for the computer to respond, he said, "Other than a few display cases in the halls of some of the buildings, the school wasn't really showing off its students' achievements. It took me awhile to collect all this," he swept his arm in an encompassing gesture, "since a lot of it was just squirreled away. But if you're representing alumni, you need to remind them of why they came here and why they want to send their children here. Like Christina." He glanced at Steve and Myka with practiced winsomeness.

Helena had been studying a series of photographs of Barrington's sports teams decorating a wall, and she called to Myka with a delight that managed to sound genuine, "Darling, come take a look at these pictures and tell me you can't see Christina on the field."

An image of the four-year-old Christina in a field hockey uniform several sizes too big for her flashed across Myka's mind, but it wasn't that improbable to imagine Christina pushing the ball to the goal with an unerring instinct for wrong-footing her opponents, just like her mother. Funny how a four-year-old could make ruthlessness endearing. Helena was standing in front of a newspaper photograph of Barrington's lacrosse team. It wasn't a recent photograph, although the newspaper page showed little sign of yellowing. Myka recognized a teenaged Bryce DeWitt standing in the back, his arms slung around the necks of two of his teammates. A large trophy had been placed in front of the boys in the first row, who were sitting cross-legged on the ground. Exclaiming about the virtues of team sports, Helena pointed to the print below the photograph, and Myka spotted the names of three of the families who had reported jewelry stolen.

"You must have been quite good, Bryce," Helena said, the teasing note in her voice underscored by a playful smile meant just for him.

He continued to tap on the laptop's keyboard, frowning at the screen. "Oh, the lacrosse trophy. No star, but good enough to assist the guys who were better."

With a final demanding tap, he was able to retrieve the document he wanted. With satisfaction, he said, "Here you go." A printer jolted and whirred on a stand half-hidden by the drapes at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, producing a sheet of paper that DeWitt gave to Steve. "Phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Call anyone on this list for the nitty-gritty about Barrington, not that there's much gritty about the school." He was pleased with his joke and sent a belated but equally playful grin to Helena. "And if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to give me a call." He took out a stack of business cards from a desk drawer and handed them out, vigorously shaking Steve's hand and then Myka's, only somewhat less vigorously. But the smile he turned on her was strangely intimate. "You don't mind me giving your wife my card, do you? I don't want you to get the wrong idea." He let his eyes trail down her face to her lips, where they traced the shape of her mouth before finally, slowly lifting to meet her gaze. "If you think of questions she doesn't," he hitched a shoulder in Helena's direction, "I'm always here to answer them."

Myka had the feeling he would be willing to answer her questions at other locations beside the school and outside working hours as well. She watched him press a card into Helena's hand and laugh politely at her remark that she ought to take another card to give to Christina, just in case; as a potential Barrington alumna, she might have questions – in a few years. He offered to take them down to the entrance, but Helena mock regretfully waved him off, saying, "We need to compare notes, though I can assure you that we're feeling very positive about Barrington and its staff."

The three of them were silent as they descended the stairs and walked to the main doors. Myka wondered if DeWitt's comments about his contribution to the lacrosse team, "No star, but good enough to assist the guys who were better," spoke to something more fundamental about him. She wouldn't be surprised to learn that he had been a scholarship student at Barrington. The eagerness to accommodate them, the desire to anticipate their questions and concerns, a skill set needed for his position, yes, but traits he exhibited so naturally that she had to assume they had always been a part of his personality. To be accepted by the children of privilege required putting their needs above your own. Or making a good show of it, anyway. Just because he was at the beck and call of others didn't mean he was helpless to crook his finger at someone else. Flirting with Helena, he had made time to play up to her shy, quiet wife – when he thought Helena wasn't looking. But perhaps it was strategy as much or more than a knee-jerk need to manipulate. A con artist needed to know that he was believed; if one person began asking questions, others might start asking them as well. A mark couldn't be allowed to stand off to one side, she had to be drawn in. DeWitt had to reassure himself that Helena's wife was no more immune to his charm than Helena was.

As they walked to the visitors' parking lot, Steve asked, "Did you find a connection between DeWitt and our victims?"

Myka nodded. "He used to play lacrosse with some of the men. It's not much, but it's more than we had before."

Helena was appraising the cars in the neighboring staff parking lot. She pointed to a red convertible, parked away from the others, with a vaguely triangular front-end that gave it a viperish appear. "That's a Ferrari, and I would wager that it's DeWitt's," she said, narrowing her eyes. "The naughty child amongst all the staid elders." It was true, the other cars, which formed a loose perimeter around the Ferrari, were in shades of black, gray, and dark blue. Although it was unlikely that staff meetings were populated with ancient conservatives who viewed DeWitt as a slick youngster destined to lead the school to ruin, surely Helena wasn't the only one looking at the car and wondering how the head of alumni affairs at a private school, even one of Barrington's caliber, could afford a $300,000 convertible. _If_ the car was his . . . .

"There's nothing about him that can't be explained by what he does. He's a fundraiser for a private school that caters to the wealthy. He has to have the personality and the tools," Myka tilted her head toward the car, "for the job."

"He's a predator and a crude one," Helena said disdainfully. "He could have waited until I was out of the room before engaging in that bit of foreplay with you."

"He needed to ensure that I was charmed," Myka said quietly. "It was reflexive, not personal, you should know that." She immediately regretted her last four words.

Helena had registered them, her eyes widening before she recovered with a cynical twist of her mouth. "You don't have to convince me of that, dear. It wasn't jealousy speaking, only disappointment in his technique, or lack thereof." She rummaged in her purse for her phone and touched the screen. "I think we can consider our marriage over at 12:38 p.m." She dropped her phone back into the purse.

"Next steps," Steve interjected, fixing the both of them with an admonishing look.

"We're going to have to build a better case against him before we can ask for anything substantial," Myka said, gingerly touching the twist into which she had bound her hair. She wouldn't be running her hand through that. "So we re-review the case files and set up surveillance on him."

Steve groaned. "I hate having dinner in the car, and I hate the dinners I have in the car." He scowled at Myka. "I will not subsist on Twizzlers, either."

"While the two of you are eating lukewarm take-out in front of DeWitt's home and pouring over the case files, I'll be living in the 21st century and reading Facebook pages and checking out Instagram," Helena said sardonically. "This is the most exciting thing to have happened to DeWitt's partners-in-crime since Daddy made them senior vice president or the family trust distributed its assets. Someone's had to have said something he shouldn't have." She turned to squint at the Ferrari again. "Given how DeWitt was practically groping you in front of me, Myka, I suspect he's been sleeping with some of their wives. That might provide us some leverage, if we can find a smoking gun, better yet, a picture of a smoking bedsheet. It's amazing what people will admit to in a public forum." She faced Myka and Steve with a cocky grin. "I bet I find something useful before you do."

"Tortoises and hares, Helena," Steve replied, angling across the visitors' lot toward a nondescript sedan whose Kelley Blue Book value was worth several thousand dollars less than that of any of the other cars, except for the one Myka had driven.

"Snakes and mice," Helena countered, the cockiness vanishing. "Races are a luxury when it's eat or be eaten. We need to stop DeWitt before he finds another mouse."

"Won't argue with you about that," Steve said, fishing the key ring out of his pocket and pressing the button on the remote to unlock the car doors.

Myka had started toward her car, when Helena said, "Myka." She stopped and looked back at Helena, whose face displayed an unwonted earnestness. "Earlier I thought . . . I want the best for Christina, but I don't think I could send her here. If this had been real, if I had been looking for a high school ten years before she needs to be enrolled at one," she hastily amended, as if embarrassed that Myka might think she had been seriously considering Barrington, and then adding wryly, "If I weren't a prisoner on special probation, which, I'm sure, isn't on the list of desired qualities in a Barrington applicant." Seeing Myka's brows arrowing together in confusion, Helena made a dismissive motion. "When we were on the tour, you went . . . somewhere . . . and when you came back, you looked at this school and at me as though we were something horrific." She exhaled a frustrated sigh. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? You were probably just counting down the minutes until this charade could be over. But I want Christina to be a better person than I was, than I am. I'm not sure she would learn how to be that person here."

And she had been foolish enough to believe that Helena had been in that conference room at Marston Oil with her, that, occasionally, Helena's conscience stung her about the Marstons, about the smaller betrayal, if not the larger one that was the only one the agency, the art world, the world at large knew about. Or would care about even if they knew the full extent of Helena's deception. She could continue being foolish, and childish, begrudging the fact that Helena was more focused on her daughter than on lies she had told eight years ago, or she could appreciate the fact that Helena wanted more than what privilege could buy for Christina despite DeWitt's touting of all that Barrington could offer. So she said, not unkindly, "But when the world is full of snakes and mice, what are her choices? If Christina's destined to be a mouse, at least here she would be a cosseted one."

"There are moments when I believe there's more in the world than snakes and mice," Helena said with a short laugh. "If it hadn't been for you, I'd be coaching her on how to scam the other kids at her preschool out of their snacks."

She hadn't been looking at Myka as she said it, instead letting her eyes follow Steve to their car, but Myka saw something vulnerable all the same in Helena's face, if only in the intensity with which she trained her eyes on Steve. It was enough to stop Myka from saying that she no longer believed in a world that wasn't divided between snakes and mice. She wasn't above trying to hurt Helena, but she would prefer to do it with the truth, and, when it came down to it, she didn't believe that people were either snakes or mice, not really. They could be both, and they could also aspire to be better than a snake, stronger than a mouse. She wished only that people could be better and stronger more often.

"He's waiting on you," Myka said. Steve was twisting his head out of the driver's side window, looking at them, lips pursed as if he were about to whistle.

"You haven't asked me what you are in this new world of mine," Helena gently chided her. "If you showed me that it wasn't all snakes and mice, you had to be something else."

I was the mouse that you momentarily regretted eating. There's your difference. But Myka didn't say that either. "I'm afraid to guess," she said as she resumed walking to her car. That was true enough. Rabbit, deer, lamb, they were more appealing than a mouse but as easily killed.

"A dolphin." Myka stopped again and gave her an incredulous look. Helena's eyes flared, and she matched the look. "What's not to like? Dolphins are beautiful, graceful, intelligent creatures." Softening, a smile that was almost wistful briefly appearing, Helena said, "And at home in an element completely foreign to me. My kind of snake can't swim, and dolphins can't survive on land."

Unsure how to respond, unsure how she wanted to respond, Myka said, with an attempt at lightness that was only partially successful, "Then it was never destined to work out for us."

"Unless one of us changes," Helena said it quietly but clearly.

Snakes don't shed their nature, only their skin. Yet one more thing Myka chose not to say. Not because it would have hurt Helena to hear it – she wouldn't spare her the truth – but because she would have hurt saying it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise that this fic will have a happy ending. Except that Christina might be a teenager before Myka is in a forgiving mood.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter didn't take me exactly where I wanted to go, so I may try to crank out another sooner than I normally would. Not that I didn't enjoy my own metaphoric fall drive . . . . As for Helena's bit of problem-solving prowess at the end, I could say I just ran out of time and energy to explain it better (or more realistically), but I'll chalk it up to Helena being Helena.

She was chasing Christina around the yard, pretending to strangle on her breath and, with theatrical gestures that came straight from her high school drama class, grabbing at her chest as if her heart was about to fly from it. Christina was shrieking with laughter, trying to run even faster, and when, with a groan, Myka collapsed onto the grass, Christina hopped ahead a few feet, shouting, "I won, Mommy, I won." Helena, sitting on one of the steps of the back porch, clapped enthusiastically and praised her daughter's efforts.

Rolling onto her back, Myka squinted against the brightness of the sun but enjoyed the contrast between the coolness of the ground under her and the warmth stealing through the front of her shirt. Running a few short circuits around the yard hadn't winded her by any means, but only an hour into the four-hour visit, she was more tired than she liked to admit. She wasn't unfamiliar with the energy of little kids; she had had her five-year-old nephew taking her on endless toboggan runs over Christmas, but she hadn't been coming off three, no, four nights of surveillance before having to run after him. Christina was approaching her curiously. "Get up, My-ka," she said, half in command, half in concern.

"In a minute. My-ka is resting." Myka smiled at her. She had gotten in the habit around Christina of stressing the second syllable of her name. It sounded a little bit like a bird call when the emphasis fell on the "ka," which was better than the bark or gunshot her name could sound like when someone was yelling it.

Christina looked from her to Helena, unsure whether playtime was over. "Go get a ball, pumpkin, and we'll play catch," Helena said, her tone becoming sardonic, "while Agent Bering catches her breath."

As Christina dithered between the whiffle balls, tennis balls, and larger balls that lay like eggs in the yard, running from one to the next, Helena left the porch to sit next to Myka, her legs extended, hands planted at her sides. She seemed to be inspecting how expertly she had painted her toenails, which sported a fuchsia-colored polish that matched her blouse, but she asked Myka quietly, "Nothing of interest last night either?"

"No." Myka was surprised, and grateful, that Helena hadn't led off with a sarcastic comment about "the Neanderthal" having "tired her out" the night before. She was also struck, and less than grateful for the noticing of it, by how the sunlight intensified the blackness of Helena's hair. It was only the richer and darker for the light, and Myka imagined that if she passed her hand through the strands it would come away covered in ink. "When we took over, Lee and Jennifer said DeWitt had only left once, to work out at his gym and then go to the grocery store. He didn't go out again. Steve and I called it a night around 11:30."

"Baby, just bring one of the tennis balls here," Helena called to Christina, who had collected an armful of balls. "She's starting to act like you," she grumbled at Myka. "Did I not say  _a_  ball? And there she is gathering every one we have."

"Yep. Dedicated to the job." Without thinking about it, Myka grinned up at her. The exasperation in Helena's face subtly altered, her brows crinkling together in puzzlement at the same time that her gaze became more intent. She shifted, beginning to lower her head, and Myka's heart started to beat faster. Then the phone clipped to her jeans buzzed, and she thumbed the screen as she awkwardly maneuvered to her knees, leaning away from Helena.

"You said you needed to talk to me," Bobby Olson's voice was sharp with annoyance. "So here I am."

Myka lurched to her feet, walking to a corner of the yard free, relatively speaking, of Christina's toys. "Not over the phone. We want to meet with you." She pictured Bobby frowning, dirty fingers scratching at his patchy beard or his greasy hair, and shuddered.

"You're not good for business," he complained. "Besides, I'm not too happy with you. Some of your friends tried to jam me up, that's never been part of my deal with you guys."

"First, there's no 'deal.'" Second, your beef is with the other agents. I don't give a fuck what they did." Myka had hardened her voice. Bobby in a good mood was never a pleasure to work with; a Bobby angry because an agent had gotten impatient with him and threatened to haul him in for one of his petty scams was that much worse. It explained why he had been ignoring her messages, but trying to reassure him or reason with him wasn't the solution, she had learned; it made him only the more contemptuous. Being profane and scathing worked as well as anything else. The lack of sympathy seemed to realign the parameters of his relationship with the agency. It was like restarting a computer when the operating system became momentarily scrambled.

"What do you have to meet with me about?" Somewhere in that growl was a concession to the necessity of dealing with her.

"You'll find out when we meet. Tomorrow. At eleven, the usual place." Her tone invited no negotiation of the time or place, but Myka knew he spent most of the morning checking with his "suppliers" about various goods, some stolen, some counterfeit, needing buyers. There was no sense in further annoying him by disrupting his schedule more than she felt was necessary to enforce who was boss.

"You could at least buy me lunch."

"Give me a break. You stink so bad you make me want to throw up my morning coffee. Like I'm going to sit down and eat lunch with you."

He laughed. "I said buy me lunch. I'm not asking you to eat it with me. You're a cheap-ass bitch, Bering." She had coddled him back into a good mood apparently. That had been an almost affectionate good-bye from him.

She watched as Helena threw the tennis ball in a high arc that ended well short of Christina, who, with an endearing lack of coordination, tried to grab the ball as it bounced on the ground in front of her but ended up clapping air instead. "You throw like a girl," Myka said.

"I am a girl," Helena retorted. With only a slight maliciousness, she added, "There was a time when you liked that about me."

"I'm a girl, I'm a girl," Christina parroted. She fixed her fingers around the tennis ball and attempted to throw it toward her mother, but it popped out from her hand and landed behind her. She turned to frown at the ball, and Myka picked it up and held it out to her.

"Here," she said, squatting next to her. "You want to hold it like this." She positioned Christina's fingers on the ball. "Then you want to draw back your arm like this." Myka gently moved Christina's arm backward. "That's it, bend your arm. You need to get it behind your ear." As Christina complied, she gave Myka such a sober look, waiting for further instruction, that Myka had to bite back a smile. Just as gravely, she said, "Now bring that arm forward, like it's an arrow pointing at a target, and let it fly." Christina lost her grasp on the ball again, but Myka caught it from her fingertips and pushed or slapped it, more than she truly threw it, in Helena's direction. It didn't go far, but Christina was impressed with her throw, and she jumped up and down as Helena retrieved the ball. Helena smiled and said, "Aces, pumpkin," but her eyes, as they met Myka's, slid away and, while she continued to smile brightly at her daughter, Myka felt vaguely embarrassed, as though she had infringed on some mother-child preserve. Warren Bering wouldn't have been pleased with her either; he would have let the ball drop to the ground and then hectored Christina for being unable to hold onto it. If he had held true to form, he would have had her throw the ball several times, her attempts punctuated by his "You're not trying hard enough" and "I know you can do better" topped off by his ultimate in parental encouragement, "Goddammit, we're going to stay out here until you get it right."

Helena tossed the tennis ball aside. "Shall we have a snack? Nonni's been waiting and waiting for us, don't you think?" Christina vigorously nodded and ran to grab her mother's outstretched hand. As was becoming more frequent with her, Christina held out her other hand to Myka, and as Myka took it, she slowed her stride to keep pace with them.

"Not that I'm in favor of your Neanderthal reproducing himself," Helena said lightly, again not quite looking at Myka, "but he could do far, far worse than choosing you as a mother. You'd be good at it."

"I've risen to an acceptable level of incompetence just being an aunt," Myka said. "I don't see any reason to strive for more. Besides, the world has seen enough of the patented Bering parenting skills."

Helena looked as if she wanted to argue the point, but then she bent down to Christina and said, "Let's see if we can beat Myka to the porch."

Christina giggled agreement and released Myka's hand. Her legs churned industriously, but her steps were too short to take her very far, and Myka wondered if all four-year-olds ran like cartoon characters, all flailing limbs and dust clouds, but getting nowhere fast. Helena had only to skip a length or two to catch up with her, but she pumped her arms and yelled, "Pour it on, sweetheart, she's right behind us." Christina looked over her shoulder at Myka but only the rate of her giggles increased.

"You run like girls," Myka said, jogging around them and taking the porch steps in one leap.

She held the door open for them, and Christina ran to where Jemma was stretched out in her armchair, feet propped on her ottoman, flipping through a magazine. Despite drawing in great gulps of air as she spoke, Christina was dismayingly easy to understand. "Myka's going to be a mommy." She tugged at the hem of Jemma's blouse to ensure that her grandmother was paying attention to her. "Myka and Mommy are going to have a baby." At that, Jemma put her magazine down and arched an eyebrow at Helena and Myka as Christina grandly promised, "They're going to bring it here, and I'll get to play with it."

"Are they now?" Jemma rose, smiling at Myka's frantic waving of her hands in a cancelling motion. She crooked a finger at Christina, who obediently trailed her into the kitchen and pulled herself onto a stool at the breakfast bar.

"No, no, that's not going to happen," Myka said, nervously laughing. "No babies, certainly not ones that Helena and I would have together." She looked to Helena for help, but Helena had joined her mother and daughter in the kitchen and was taking a gallon of milk from the refrigerator, the corners of her mouth curving in something suspiciously like a smirk.

"Peanut butter or Nutella, poppet?" Jemma set out both on the breakfast bar as well as a box of graham crackers. "This new baby, do you want it to be orange or black?"

Christina tilted her head in consideration. "Nutella. And orange." Myka's eyes widened and she slid onto a stool next to Christina, who whispered behind her hand as if she were sharing a secret, "What are you going to have on your cracker, Myka-Myka?"

"She wants an orange baby?" Myka stared in confusion at Jemma.

Jemma worked a cracker from its sleeve and slathered Nutella on it. She gave it to Christina and then she took another cracker and another knife and covered it with both peanut butter and Nutella. "You're too thin," she said as she handed it to Myka. "So is she." Jemma flicked a glance at Helena, who was pouring milk into four glasses, one of which was half the size of the other three. Helena only shrugged at her mother's words. "Last week, Christina wanted Helena to give birth to a litter of kittens, three orange and three black. I think the line between kittens and babies is a blurry one for her still."

Helena carried over two of the glasses and inspected Christina's hand as she crammed more of the cracker into her mouth. "Let's get those hands clean, pumpkin." Christina climbed down from the stool and followed her to the sink. Helena turned on the faucet and lifted Christina so that she could hold her hands under the water. Raising her voice in order to be heard above Christina's noisy splashing, Helena said, "Not that there aren't advantages to having kittens instead of babies. They clean themselves, they're housebroken faster, they're already learning how to find their own food, and in under a year, I can send them out to live on their own."

Jemma dug out a spoon from a drawer and dipped it into the Nutella. "When Helena wasn't much older than Christina, she went through a similar stage. But it wasn't ponies or unicorns like other girls, not even kittens. She was going to grow up and marry a dolphin and have dolphin babies. I'd never heard of such a thing." Myka nearly choked on her cracker, but Jemma didn't seem to notice, musingly nibbling the spoon. "She seemed to think the North Sea was full of them."

Holding onto Christina's raised arms as she monster-walked back to her stool, Helena leaned into Myka and said, "You thought I'd made that up about dolphins the other day, didn't you?" Giving her daughter a pat on the butt as she scooted onto the seat, Helena said wryly to Jemma, "Whether my future children will have fins or fur remains to be seen, but I fear that Myka's future children will have a belligerent disposition, protruding brow and prognathous jaw."

"She's much too nice and attractive for that," Jemma said dismissively, but her gaze sharpened as she continued to look at Helena. "Oh, I understand now, Myka's seeing someone, is she? A caveman in your opinion." She glared at her daughter before patting Myka's hand. "Good for you, pet." Bringing over the remaining glasses of milk from the counter, she said admonishingly to Helena, who was settling on the stool on the other side of Christina. "You can make all the sour faces you want about it, but you were the one who made such a mess of things years ago. If you hadn't, Christina probably would have a sibling or two. Maybe one with Myka's curls." She found a fresh spoon and ran it around the inside of the Nutella jar, glancing at Myka. "I've always loved your hair, dear."

Myka was studiously mortaring another graham cracker with peanut butter. She didn't know what she found more unsettling, Jemma's conjuring up of an alternative present, in which Christina was hers as well as Helena's, or her matter-of-fact summarizing of what had prevented that alternative present from becoming her present, their present, as a "mess." Something that you cleaned up or stepped over, not something you lingered next to, stared at, unable to move away from it. As she looked up and met Helena's eyes with their usual mixture of curiosity, apprehension, and not a little resentment, she wondered how easily Helena had put her "mess" behind her. But it wasn't just one mess, perhaps not even the most significant one in her mind. There was the securities fraud that she had so uncharacteristically bungled, the mess that had put her in prison, taking her away from her daughter.

It was useless trying to guess what Helena might regret about the Marston Gallery theft, and Jemma was right to emphasize how long ago it had happened. Too long ago for regret to make a difference for them now. Myka heard herself abruptly say, "The call earlier, we have an appointment at 11:00 tomorrow. In Hoboken." And if "Hoboken" couldn't ground her in the present, the real present with its smelly confidential informants and the grimy chop shops in which she met them, what would?

Later, much later in the afternoon, after Christina had persuaded them to go back outside for a game of hide and seek, and after a session of finger painting that ended with her presenting her mother, grandmother, and Myka with Christina Wells (or was it Winslow now?) originals, and after she had started yawning and Helena had taken her to her bedroom for a nap, Myka was sitting in the living room with Jemma, slouched in the armchair opposite her, scrolling through maps of Hoboken on her phone while Jemma read a paperback romance with a particularly lurid cover. She was trying to determine the quickest route from the office to Bobby's cousin's Full Service Auto Repair (yeah, right), quickest depending on the season, the time of day, and the amount of road construction. She had managed to worm from Helena the location of the place, still unnamed, still undescribed, that they would be visiting after they met with Bobby, so at least she had been able to have Parker reset the software for Helena's ankle monitor. No alarms should go off when they crossed the amorphous boundary between New York and New Jersey.

Other than knowing that the place was in a cluster of warehouses not far from the waterfront, Myka wasn't sure what it was that Helena was taking them to. There were a number of businesses using that address, mainly light industry, a bottler and a manufacturer of specialty cleaning products among them. It wasn't all that far from where they were meeting Bobby; if they could take to the rooftops, it would take no more than ten minutes to get there, but factor in street traffic, and they could easily triple the time.

"Hmm?" She was marginally aware that Jemma had asked her something, but it was relaxing, figuring out which streets to take, like solving a maze. If you followed the right series of streets, you made it to the center. It was a puzzle, not a mess. It wasn't a four-year-old bubbling over with enthusiasm about the babies you were going to have with her mother. It didn't matter that the difference between kittens and babies was unclear in Christina's mind, it wasn't unclear in her own mind. The rest of the afternoon, Myka had felt that alternate reality press against this one, as though nothing stronger than a screen or curtain separated them, and she half-expected to be pulled through it, chair and all, never to return. One wrong move, one moment of inattention, and she would disappear.

So, cautiously, carefully, because she had been inattentive, Myka said, "I'm sorry, Jemma, you were saying?"

"I was asking you how awkward this is for you, personally. It's not just what Christina said earlier, I've wondered before." Jemma had put her book down, but her eyes strayed to its cover, which depicted a muscle-bound pirate burying his face between his captive's breasts. "This man you're involved with . . . is it serious?"

Torn between wanting to be honest with Jemma, because she needed to feel that there was someone in this household, besides Christina, with whom she could interact without having to be on guard, and knowing that she couldn't, because Jemma wasn't a neutral party, Myka said, "We haven't had that conversation yet." With a smile to soften the fact that she was cutting off further questions, Myka looked down at her phone.

"Maybe you should have the conversation sometime soon because he should know that you're still half in love with my daughter."

There had been only gentleness in Jemma's voice, which, somehow, had made the hearing of what she said that much worse. Trying not to grip the phone as if it were a life preserver, Myka said, with a laugh that she hoped didn't sound too affected, "If it's only half, then there's half of me that's not."

"I was being kind, love." Myka raised her eyes, having no idea what face she was showing to Jemma. She was angry, although she didn't know if she was angrier with Jemma for bringing up something that didn't matter, didn't have any relevance anymore, or with herself for sufficiently betraying her unhappiness with this assignment - and that's all it was - to allow Jemma to read into it what she wanted. But if Jemma saw the anger, it didn't bother her. "The only thing that's holding  _her_  back is what's left of her pride. Christina may be shaky on the mechanics of baby-making, but she can read the feelings, and she's only four."

Jemma wasn't a neutral party, but it wouldn't be giving away something she shouldn't to be honest with her in this instance. "There's been too much, Jemma, for there ever to be . . . ."

"That's what your head's telling you." Jemma looked at her with more sympathy than Myka could bear. "Most girls, they gradually grow out of their fascination with ponies and unicorns. Part of growing up, I guess, realizing that your future is with the two-legged variety. Jim, when he visited, which wasn't often, generally when he was feeling the heat in the States, he brought her all sorts of dolphin-themed gifts. He brought her paints, too, and sketch pads because he had figured out how good she was, even with her being just a little thing." Jemma smiled, but Myka sensed the memories weren't pleasant ones. "She wanted to paint dolphins, of course, but he was ambitious for her, wanting her to do more than paint animals. I should have known then what he was molding her to do, but he was taking an interest in her, and I didn't have the heart to interfere. One day he took her to a museum, she must have been about nine or ten, and he tried to have her copy a painting, but she had wanted him to take her to the seashore instead. They must have had quite a dust-up because she was in tears when they came back, so I took her shopping with me. Wasn't much of a treat to go up and down aisles with her mother, but at least I wasn't making her copy a painting. When we got home, everything he had ever given her, it was gone, toys, paints, books, dresses, all of it. And he didn't come back for three years."

Myka rubbed her face. "He was a prick and he treated her badly, I get that, but it doesn't excuse -"

Jemma's laugh was rueful. "Not an excuse. She always knew what she was doing. But you need to understand what a hold he had on her, especially when he acted as if she meant nothing to him. She wrote him every night for months, begging him to come back and promising that she would be 'good.' I opened every damn envelope she left for me to mail to him, and God help me, I did end up mailing them, because, in spite of everything, he was her father. And she never talked about dolphins, never painted another one again. I know she hurt you, probably in ways I don't want to know about. All she had was a father who taught her that love was another form of manipulation." The smile on her face twisted painfully. "And a mother who let him. There's a reason, love, that she hasn't called me Mum since she was a little girl."

Myka felt an unwelcome but familiar throbbing in her head. It wasn't just Helena, it was her family. She went to the kitchen and found a clean glass. "Do you have any aspirin or Advil or something?"

"In that narrow little cupboard by the sink." Jemma rose as well, and as Myka shook out and then washed down more ibuprofen than she knew she should be taking, Jemma took out a box of tea bags. "Tea?" She rattled the box. "I know I can use some."

Myka shook her head. "It's almost five."

"I didn't mean to upset you. I'm not trying to plead her case . . . yes, yes, I am trying to plead her case because she won't do it for herself." When Jemma stood on tip-toe to reach for a mug, Myka automatically brought it down for her. Looking down into eyes that were as blue and clear as Helena's were dark and unreadable, Myka could only helplessly roll her shoulders. Her words seeming to beat in time with the pulsing ache in Myka's head, Jemma said, "These past Sundays, they've not been many, but the three of you, you're already forming a unit. You can sense that, can't you? You were good for her, Myka. Why wouldn't I want that for her again?"

"Steve will be out here next Sunday," Myka said woodenly. She put her glass in the sink and returned to the living room to pick up her phone . . . and Christina's finger-painted portrait of her, intermixed smears of brown and orange representing her hair and a yellow blob resting on a waveringly curved line that represented her shoulder. It might have been the sun or a bird, but was instead, as Christina helpfully explained, a tennis ball. She folded it and tucked it into a back pocket. Helena was coming down the stairs, her face still soft and slack with the remains of the nap she had taken.

"What's this about Agent Jinks?" Helena looked from Myka to her mother.

"Steve will be the one to pick you up next Sunday," Myka said curtly, deleting the maps of Hoboken. Who was she to think she could navigate anything successfully? Like hell she had reached the center of the maze, she was just bumbling down a dead-end, lost and clueless as always when she was with Helena.

"Ah, I had been wondering when the excitement of playing hide-and-seek and coloring would be too much for you," Helena said. She had stopped looking at Myka and was turning over a stuffed animal she had picked up from the floor. As she continued to turn the toy over and over, the sleepiness disappeared from her face and the set to her jaw became stiff. "While I don't want a revolving door of agents for her, the last thing I want is for Christina to become too attached to you." Sarcasm had turned into anger, raw and cutting.

"It's my fault, pet," Jemma said apologetically, leaning against the side of the breakfast bar. "I talk too much."

Helena bent to place the toy on an end table. Myka couldn't see her face for the sweep of her hair. "No, you were right. I made the mess, and this is what happens when you wait eight years to clean it up."

She was on time for meetings, usually early, except when it came to meeting Bobby Olson. She wanted to be late enough to press home who was calling the shots but not so late that he gave up on waiting for her. She didn't want to have go through the process of setting up a meeting with him all over again. So at ten minutes past, she and Helena opened the door to the office of Full Service Auto Repair. The service bay doors were never open; there were never any cars during business hours. There weren't any mechanics either, unless Bobby counted as one. He listed it as his occupation, but Myka suspected he didn't know the workings of a car any better than she did. The only time there were lights on and people moving around was at night when Bobby's cousin and his crew would gut the cars that were driven into the bays for parts.

Bobby's cousin was behind the counter in the office, which held no chairs, no tables, no magazines, no self-service coffee stations. His name was Pete, but because she didn't want this "Pete" contaminating the "Pete" who was her former partner, her boss, her friend, Myka didn't think of him, didn't refer to him by name. He was "You" if she had to speak to him; otherwise he was "Bobby's cousin." He was on the phone when she and Helena entered the room but immediately ended the call, bellowing through a closed door, "Bobby, she's here." Although he hadn't shaved in days and wore grease-stained coveralls that smelled pungently of various engine fluids, he was impeccable in comparison to Bobby.

Bobby came out of the private office and leaned over the counter, a nearly visible cloud of old sweat and body oils and . . . pizza cheese? . . . rising from a t-shirt that might once have been pale blue but was now a medium gray. He dismissed Myka with a slow blink, but he looked harder and longer at Helena, not in the practically lip-smacking way his cousin had - and was still doing from the doorway into the garage - but as if he was trying to recall the last place he had seen her. Helena stared at him impassively; although Myka had put on one of her most conservative business suits, so dark and plainly styled that it practically shouted "law enforcement agent," Helena was wearing boot-cut skinny jeans and a long-sleeved knit top, its unbuttoned placket generously exposing the swell of her breasts. To his credit, Bobby wasn't trying to recall where he had last seen those breasts, his eyes steadfastly staying on her face.

Finally he looked away from her and back to Myka. "What is it that you think I can help you with?"

This was going to be the tough part. She had to make it sound convincing that she would turn to him for information on stolen jewels. "Something that you think might be a little out of your territory, but we've heard there might be somebody looking to unload some jewels around here, jewels that might need a little recutting to sell."

"And you think I would know that because?" Bobby said sarcastically.

"Because they don't want to be caught trying to sell them in their backyard, because I know you know about shit that you don't personally, um, handle." Holding her breath, Myka aggressively leaned over the counter, trying not to see the blackheads in his pores, the flaking skin at his hairline, and when he smiled, exhaling a breath, just a breath, infused with the odors of rotting teeth and last night's three-meat pizza, she tried not to gag.

"You're wasting my time. They sound like amateurs, but if they were, you'd have caught them already, so you wouldn't need to be talking to me. So, why are you here fucking with me?" Bobby's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Because we heard they were trying to sell them to Ezra," Helena interjected.

Myka stilled, trying desperately not to turn and look at her. Where the hell had she come up with that? Ezra . . .Ezra . . . Ezra. Myka frantically tried to remember old cases that she and Helena had worked on. There had been one . . . not about jewels, about a silver tea set that a con had been trying to sell to a museum, claiming it had been one that George and Martha Washington had owned. Helena had spent several minutes scrutinizing it, particularly its marks, before declaring it a fake. She had pointed the team to Ezra Rainey, who owned a small retail jewelry store in Hoboken but made his living by recutting and resetting stolen jewelry. He would also turn his hand at forging heirlooms, most often for her father. In the end, Ezra had managed to avoid being arrested - which, in retrospect, was suspicious in and of itself - but the con was still serving a fairly hefty prison sentence. The last Myka had heard, however, was that Ezra had moved to Florida . . . for his health.

"Ezra's been out of the game for years, he got religion, you might say," Bobby answered, suspicions unallayed.

"I heard that he still comes up to visit his grandchildren. One of them has a heart defect, and conditions like that are expensive, even if you have good insurance." Helena had said it so smoothly that Myka couldn't tell whether she was lying.

Apparently Bobby couldn't either. "I wouldn't know about that," he said. Glancing at Myka, he repeated, "I don't know about any stolen jewelry either. Unless you've got something real for me, leave me the fuck alone."

Myka touched Helena's arm and nodded toward the door. As they were turning, Bobby suddenly said, "You're Jim Wells' daughter. You look just like him."

Helena turned back, her expression wary. "How did you know my father?" The implication was plain, she didn't even have to make the gesture of disdainfully looking around the room. In the food chain of organized crime, Bobby Olson was plankton, while Jim Wells had been a shark.

"You thought I saw his picture in a paper or something? Too small-time to lick the boots of your old man?" Bobby grinned unpleasantly at her, and, for a moment, Myka thought he was wearing a mouthguard, the kind athletes wore in contact sports to protect their teeth, until she realized it was simply film, so thick it had practically become gel. "Might surprise you to know that Nate Burdette had him running errands. He was no better than me, honey. He was hawking all kinds of penny-ante shit down here."

"He ran Nate," Helena said coldly. "Not the other way around."

"May have been like that in the beginning. But word was he owed Nate money, and Nate got his jollies snapping his fingers at your dad. He didn't need the money." Bobby paused, his grin retreating, and his gaze growing both shrewder and more fearful. Swiveling his head back toward Myka, he demanded, "Is that why you're here? You want me to give you something on Burdette? You're looking to bring him down?" The snarl curling his lips would have been more threatening had he more teeth to bare. "I don't want nothing to do with that. He's a mean fucker, and I'd deliver you to him before I'd ever give him up to you. Get the hell out of here, now." He looked toward his cousin, who had stepped closer to the counter, reaching for something underneath it.

Myka swept her suit jacket away from her holster. She had never had a meeting go this badly with him. "No need to get worked up, Bobby. We're going." She pulled at Helena's sleeve until Helena reluctantly began to walk backward from the counter. Opening the door, Myka waited for Helena to step into the parking lot, keeping her eyes hard and steady on Bobby and his cousin, and then let it close behind them.

She didn't run to the car, but she wasted no time getting into it. As soon as Helena closed her door, Myka was already pulling away from the garage. As the car bumped out of the lot, which hadn't been re-asphalted in a decade or two, Myka said grimly, "That went well. I thought I was going to have to shoot Bobby, and that would have made Pete very, very unhappy with me."

Helena was looking out the passenger window. "That's what Nate does to people, Myka. He scares little worms like that so badly they almost do something stupid."

"Or into doing whatever he tells them. How did Jim Wells come to such a pass, Helena, that he was working for his former protégé?"

Myka was concentrating on the traffic and the road, both of which were horrible. She couldn't spare a glance at Helena, but from the corner of her eye, she could tell that Helena was still staring out the window. The question hung in the air between them.

Helena never did answer it. Not when Myka double-parked to run into a corner mart to buy a couple of sandwiches and bottles of water and asked her brusquely "Turkey or ham?," not when they were stopped for ten minutes as they waited for a dump truck loaded with broken pavement to execute an excruciatingly slow three-point turn, not when they parked in a narrow slot abutting a warehouse that appeared all but abandoned, except for the small sign posted in a first floor window that announced "Photocopier Repair." An adjacent warehouse looked no more prosperous.

Helena said, "Follow me." Which, other than "ham," were the only words she had said since Myka asked her the question about her father. So Myka followed her, trying to imprint the sagging privacy fence and the crumbling brick on her mind. She would come here again, without Helena. Expecting the interior of the warehouse to be as deserted as its exterior promised, she was surprised to see men with pallet jacks moving pallets loaded with boxes from one side of the warehouse to the other. The floor wasn't crowded with containers, but it had enough to keep the men busy. Myka didn't spot any photocopiers, and she doubted that was what was in the boxes and crates, but in this instance she thought it better not to ask too many questions, at least there was a pretense being made that a legitimate business was operating on the premises. None of the men were stopping and pointing at the two of them in alarm or, worse, reaching for guns.

In fact, they seemed to pay them little attention, and no one questioned where they were going as Helena wove around pallets, headed toward an office off to the side. She knocked on the door, and when a male voice shouted something unintelligible, she opened it. Behind a battered desk that had a very new-looking laptop on it, a man spun his chair back to greet her, a white eyebrow arched over a dark, querying eye. The resemblance was faint, more in the color of the eyes and their angled cast over his cheekbones, but he was related to Helena. An uncle, perhaps. He looked to be in his late sixties or early seventies, a younger brother of Jim Wells, although Myka could remember only a sister being mentioned in the files, long dead.

"I'll be upstairs, John."

"You don't need to account to me for anything." He had barely looked in Myka's direction, but she had the feeling he knew exactly what, if not who, she was.

That was the extent of their exchange, and Myka found it impossible to determine if theirs was a relationship founded on their speaking to each other every day or once every ten years. Helena didn't walk much farther past the office before she stopped and pressed a button set into a panel. After a groan and a rattle, two doors opened vertically and Helena waved to Myka to enter the freight elevator. "It sounds like it's going to collapse, but it's safe, I assure you."

When the doors wheezed shut, Myka shot her a dubious look. "Where are we, Helena?"

"My cousin's warehouse. Actually he's my father's cousin, which would make him, what, my second cousin? My cousin-once-removed?" The smile was verging on being playful, but Myka didn't smile back. Cousins. There always seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them in crime families.

The elevator opened onto a narrow floor, which extended no more than a few feet on either side before being walled off. In front of them were double doors with an electronic lock set next to the frame. Helena quickly typed a series of numbers on the keypad and then pulled down on a door handle. Her smile had disappeared, and her eyes looked larger than normal. "You always wanted to know my secrets. This is one of them."

A bank of lights flickered on overhead and, at first, Myka thought Helena was playing a joke on her because she saw nothing except the concrete floor, veined with cracks, and the opposite wall of painted brick, then she saw the easels and the tables in the shadows, and as she continued to survey the room, she saw canvas upon canvas stacked against an interior wall. The room stretched the width of the warehouse, and it took her longer to arrive at the canvases than she had expected. She noted the industrial-sized fans set into the exterior wall, although she couldn't feel - or smell - any air from the outside flowing into the room. Below the fans were windows, almost completely covered by blackout cloth. She pivoted, in search of Helena, and spied her, perching herself on one of the tables. "The studio where the magic happened," she said. The words were flippant, but her tone wasn't.

Helena's voice was just as flat. "Not a studio, a factory, and I assure you there was no magic created here."

Crouching in front of the canvases, Myka felt oddly squeamish about touching them. She had known what Helena was, who she was for years, but she hadn't actually seen the evidence of her forgeries, touched them, flipped through them as though they were so many record albums. She wanted to run back to that rattling freight elevator and take it down to the first floor, jumping from it before the doors fully opened, intent only on getting out of the warehouse as fast as she could. She would blot out every detail that she had tried to commit to memory because she wouldn't be coming back. Ever. Instead she shushed that Myka, the one who always asked her whether it was duty that she was so eager to submit to or punishment, and lifted the first painting. Soon she didn't bother picking them up, most being unfinished, partial portraits of ballet dancers, sunflowers, mothers with children, fishermen on a sea. Other canvases were blank, while yet others, though blank, were stained and streaked with chemicals. Myka ended up examining those the longest, eventually concluding that they were canvases that had been put through some sort of artificial aging process, with less than successful results. When she stood up and stepped away from the canvases, her muscles were stiff and her back ached, and she didn't know how much time had passed.

"How long has it been since you used this room?"

Helena was still sitting on the table, gently swinging her legs, and while Myka hadn't looked over her shoulder to see what Helena was doing as she was going through the canvases, she had felt Helena's eyes on her, as if Helena knew the canvases in order and was crossing each one off in her mind as Myka moved on to the next. "Not since before Christina was born."

Myka switched her attention to the next stack; facing out was a nearly complete abstract painting that looked familiar, with its piled-on irregular shapes in reds, purples, and browns, receding into the background like a mountain range. The brushwork was thick, almost as if the paint had been applied with a trowel. "Is this a real Jim Wells or one of yours?"

Myka heard the steady click-click of boots on the floor, which stopped only when Helena came to stand next to her. She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head as she looked at the painting. "Both. Jim never stopped painting, but most of his later work wasn't very good. He knew it; that's why he never attempted to do anything with it. He'd just store the canvases somewhere and try to forget about them. When he died, interest in him as a painter revived a little, and I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, now could I? Take something and improve upon it. Must be the overachiever in me." Both the look and the smile Helena gave her were mocking. "Jim would have expected no less. He would have returned from the dead if he could have to tell me which ones would be the best to, ah, 'touch up.' There were buyers eager to be fleeced, although the auction houses and galleries were leery. I have no idea why, a forger representing the estate of a con artist. Doesn't that happen all the time?" The smile became brittle. "The Winslow Gallery decided to give a showing of them, if only because Ben Winslow had a drug problem I was willing to help hide and support."

"Nothing like extortion and abetting an addiction to bring out the gratitude in someone. Kind of explains his attitude toward you now," Myka said, feeling a surge of revulsion. It was one thing to deceive someone, it was another to take advantage of his addiction. But didn't deception require an addiction, an obsession, a weakness? The mark was blind to something in herself that was all too visible to the con, and if the mark didn't have an obvious weakness, the con had to create it. Who was she to think she had been any better or stronger than Ben Winslow when the facts indicated the opposite? She didn't take drugs, didn't drink to excess, wasn't promiscuous, but she had craved for someone to recognize all that goodness, all that hard-won inner strength. Her virtue or, rather, her pride in her virtue had been her weakness and Helena's weapon. She had been so mesmerized by the mirror Helena had held up to her that she hadn't been able to look away from it to see what Helena was actually doing.

"Snakes and mice, Myka. He was the mouse, and I was the snake. Now Ben's a snake, and I'm your mouse. Does it make you feel better? Are the scales of justice righted?" Helena hugged herself tighter. Then she unfolded her arms and with a swift, savage kick, she drove her boot into the painting and walked away.

Myka decided to wait out the fit of temper. If Helena was being pricked by something resembling a conscience, so much the better. Giving herself a shake, plucking and tugging at her top though it was too body-hugging to need readjusting, Helena said, taking refuge in sarcasm once more, "Other than setting myself up to be the object of your contempt, I did have a purpose for bringing you here." Sweeping her hair over her shoulder, she headed toward a sheet-draped object at a distance from the other canvases. "I should have taken better care of these, but I thought I was never going to need them. The scam well had run dry." She pulled the sheet from what was another stack of canvases and searched through them until she found the one she was seeking, a smaller canvas than the rest, consisting of horizontal bars of deepening shades of gray with faint, spidery lines of lighter gray crosshatching them.

"It's a Phillips," Myka said. Her mouth tightened. "Or a faux Phillips."

"It's genuine." Helena casually waved toward the remaining canvases. "They're all originals, ones Jim got as gifts - or payments - when he was a young artist knocking about with other young artists. You'd recognize a few, but most . . . . " She studied the painting more intently. "Most died young and unknown. Except for Martin Phillips. The story goes that Phillips sold my father this painting for ten dollars, enough to keep him supplied with bourbon for a few days. It was the original  _Study in Gray No. 5_ , or so Jim claimed. Phillips tried to buy it back from him, and when he couldn't, he repainted it from memory."

"The Bowdoin," Myka said softly. "The  _Study in Gray No. 5_  was among the paintings stolen from the Bowdoin."

Helena very carefully placed the painting back on the floor. "And people think Jim Wells didn't have a sentimental streak," she said. "More likely a jealous one. Poor old Martin had drunk himself to death decades ago, and Jim couldn't let go of the resentment that a Phillips was worth more than a Wells. I found this in a storage unit, where Jim kept a lot of things he didn't want to remember he still had."

"You're going to give it to Burdette as proof that you know where the rest of the works are." Myka ran her hand through her hair. "That's your bait."

"It's all I have, Myka. Nate knows what was taken from the Bowdoin, and with a little work, I can make this look like  _No. 5_. It is  _No. 5_ , or a version of it. An afternoon's work is probably all it will take." Her voice took on an edge. "I don't have the time to whip out a fake Homer or Sargent. Your Neanderthal has impressed upon me the need to bring Nate to him quickly."

Myka began to work her fingers more vigorously through her hair. "And Burdette is going to trust the authenticity of a painting that you bring him? He's going to laugh you out the door or kill you, depending on his mood."

"Trust me? Of course not," Helena scoffed. "But I won't deny that I've made some repairs, which means I'll have to beat this up a little bit first and blame it on the idiots my father hired to help with the heist. Nate won't have any difficulty with that part of it; I'm sure he thinks to this day he could have done a better job of the Bowdoin. Any expert he consults will tell him that it's a Phillips and from the right period. He won't be entirely convinced that it's  _No. 5_ , but he won't be able to find anyone who can tell him that it's not. This should work, unless my father told Nate that he bought what was supposed to be  _No. 5_  for a song, in which case we're screwed. And then Nate  _will_  kill me." The wryness didn't diminish the confidence of her smile, that smile, the one that suggested they shared a secret. The smile deepened, her bottom lip dipping lower, implying that this secret was the best yet, eclipsing any other, and Myka, despite the injunction in her head not to, smiled back, surrendering to the power of the promise, though she knew it was empty, that they were in this together.

_Exiting the museum, Helena closed her eyes, inhaling so loudly that Myka could hear her._   _The air smelled of exhaust and incipient rain, which didn't make Myka want to suck in a lungful, but she understood that it took the place of Helena thumping her chest or dancing in the end zone. It was the "victory" inhalation of a job well done, a difficult task completed, and the smile Helena wore, spreading out from the center of her lips like ripples on the surface of a pond, washed lightly against Myka, and while she knew it was silly to imagine a smile lapping over her like water, she enjoyed the momentary dizziness, the feeling of being swept just the slightest bit off-balance._

_The Boston office had called Thursday morning, specifically requesting Helena's help, and Myka had been surprised and a little envious that only a few months after joining the team, Helena was so well known, and regarded, outside it. The original plan had called for Pete to take the late afternoon flight to Boston with them, but once he learned the potential counterfeit was an eighteenth century silver tea service purportedly owned by George Washington, his enthusiasm had waned and he volunteered instead to complete the several weeks' worth of paperwork - related to the cases that Helena had helped them to close - that had accumulated in his and Myka's desks. So Friday morning she and Helena and the Boston office's one all-purpose fraud investigator traveled to a pristinely restored early nineteenth century home near Harvard's campus, which had been converted to a museum specializing in Revolutionary War- and Federalist-era collections._

_The curator had taken them to a workroom behind the exhibit area on the first floor where the tea set, consisting of a teapot, sugar bowl, cream pot, and tray, had been placed on a table. As Helena examined the teapot and the tray, turning the one over and lifting the other one up to check their marks, the curator nervously explained that the seller had been able to provide documentation from respectable appraisers attesting to the set's age and silver content as well as other records establishing a provenance confirming that the Washingtons had owned the set. "Did you verify with the appraisers that they had looked at the set? You confirmed the authenticity of whatever papers the seller had proving that that the Washingtons owned the set?" Helena had picked up the cream pot and was running her finger around its rim._

_Bridling, the curator said that he had e-mailed the appraisers questions about the set, and they had responded, which was confirmation enough surely? As for the provenance, the museum owned letters of Martha Washington and it had hired a handwriting expert to confirm that various household documents that the seller had in his possession, which described the set, when and where the Washingtons had bought it, the dent in the sugar bowl from its having been dropped by a clumsy maid, were by Mrs. Washington's hand as well._

_Helena nodded. Then she pointed to the marks on the bottom of the tray, the maker's mark, the mark of the city in which the set had been produced. They were worn, the letters and designs barely distinct, the silver almost as weathered and scratched as the silver on the face of the tray. "The marks are accurate, but they're counterfeit themselves; they're probably hiding the original ones, which would tell us the set wasn't made in the eighteenth century. It was made a century or more later, if I had to guess. Not all the wear and tear you see is manufactured. As for the e-mails you received from the appraisers, call them and ask them if they've had problems with the integrity of their networks, because if they're as reputable as you say they are, they didn't send them. Ask them to provide you copies of the appraisals; if they did them, they should have them in their files." She put the tray down and the teapot back on it. "As for the household records, I bet that a few months ago you had a frequent visitor who was very interested in anything having to do with Martha Washington. He or she probably posed as a graduate student or a faculty member, asking to look at any written materials that you could provide for viewing." Helena frowned. "It was an elaborate con and a good one. One that would have taken money to set up. Too much . . . ." She raised a skeptical eyebrow at the set._

_Myka spoke up for the first time. "The seller told you that he had other items, right? The tea set was just to get a foot in the door."_

_The curator looked away from them in embarrassment. "He did mention an escritoire that had been in the President's House in Philadelphia. He said that he had already received a number of offers, but -"_

" _He was willing to give you an opportunity to bid." Helena and Myka shared a triumphant look._

_The rest of the morning they had spent questioning the appraisers over the phone or Myka had while Helena compared the seller's Martha Washington documents with the Martha Washington letters in the museum's collections. The Boston agent meanwhile had called Bates requesting that agents be sent to a jewelry store in Hoboken to question Ezra Rainey. Helena had hedged her conclusion that Rainey was the tea set's counterfeiter with a series of atypical disclaimers about how frauds involving precious metals weren't her specialty and how there might be others, conveniently unnamed, who might be as or even more likely culprits than Rainey, admitting to Myka with a shy smile that was also something of an anomaly that she had always liked Ezra and hoped he wasn't involved or, if he was, that he could avoid being arrested. Her smile turned roguish after she made her confession, and she had said impishly, "I suppose I shouldn't be saying something like that to you, but aren't you secretly glad sometimes that the criminals escape? How else can you improve unless you learn from your mistakes? And who's a better teacher than a con who's outsmarted you?"_

" _It's not a game, Helena. People have been hurt. The curator could lose his job, maybe the director too." The director, when they had spoken to her, was unwilling to disclose how much money the museum had lost, but the dark circles under her eyes and the empty coffee cups on her desk attested to sleepless nights._

" _True, not a game per se, but it is a contest. There are no second place finishes. If you win, you eat, if you lose, you're eaten." The impishness threatened to turn sour before Helena said softly, "Of all the carnivores I've met, Ezra is one of the kindest. At least he'll give you a running start before he tries to take you down. What drives him isn't the money, but the challenge. It's a heady feeling, knowing you've fooled the best in their field."_

" _Speaking from experience?" Myka asked equally as softly._

" _It wouldn't be wise for me to say, would it?"_

_Myka could better appreciate the truth of Helena's metaphor now as her dizziness receded and she felt her stomach begin to roll in discontent. "Lunch?" The Boston agent had returned to the downtown office to coordinate the next steps in the investigation, and the museum director and the curator, the last time Myka had seen them, were on a conference call trying to placate the chairman of the board; not having liked the acquisition in the first place, the chairman had been the one to make the call to the FBI. Good luck, Myka thought, in trying to get the board to lend a sympathetic ear._

" _You mean a sandwich split on the cab ride to the airport," Helena said with little enthusiasm as she descended the steps to the sidewalk._

" _As long as we made it a quick lunch, we could -"_

" _There's nothing more to be done here," Helena interrupted. "We assisted the Boston office, and now they're back in charge. The trained monkey who passes as your partner is doing all the paperwork I'm sure you think you need to rush back to. It's a glorious autumn day, or will be," she amended, glancing up at the clouds portending rain, "once the skies clear. You should call that boyfriend of yours and have him fly up; you could drive to the Berkshires or Vermont and take in the fall colors."_

_Myka shifted her feet uncertainly. Spontaneity made her nervous. But the idea of a country inn, if not the mad dash to get there and back, was appealing. She had more vacation than she would ever use, but all she had was the suit she was wearing and an extra pair of panties. Not traipsing-through-forests clothing. Why was she giving this any consideration? Sam wouldn't be interested in straying too far from his cases; in the hour or two of free time he would allow himself this weekend, he would spend it in front of one of the pennant races on TV, a beer in hand. Her presence would be optional._

" _We're not that kind of couple. We're not a couple, not really . . . ." Myka didn't know why she had said that. Helena hadn't been asking for an explanation of her love life, suggesting a weekend getaway because, well, who wouldn't have, with an open Friday afternoon stretching before her? But she wasn't like Helena, the idea hadn't even occurred to her. Myka had thought stealing an hour for lunch at a café before grabbing the next flight back was sinful enough. Not that Helena's idea of down time would include a fall drive among New England hardwoods - too bourgeois, too middle class, too Myka._

" _You deserve better," Helena said, walking out to the middle of the street and looking in the direction of Harvard Square. "You think one might peel away from the pack in search of a fare," she grumbled._

" _Do you have plans this weekend?" Myka was amazed that she sounded so casual because she had had no idea that she would spontaneously issue an invitation. It was an invitation she had offered, right? Because she was pretty sure that she had only planned to tell Helena, first, to get out of the middle of the street and, second, that they could call a cab. She had the numbers saved in her phone._

_Helena made no move to get out of the street, wagging her head before flashing a smile so open in its delight that Myka felt it rock her, just as Helena's secretive one had minutes before. Maybe all of Helena's smiles rocked her, which would be a disturbing development. . . ._

" _Nothing that I can't postpone until next weekend."_

_By the time they had eaten lunch and rente_ _d a car, half of Boston was driving to the western end of the state, so it was long after dark before they found a bed and breakfast that had a vacant room. They collapsed on the double bed, too exhausted to unpack. It didn't matter; they didn't have pajamas or sleep shirts or nightgowns to change into. When Myka woke up early the next morning, still in her shirt and suit pants, she realized that Helena must have gotten up in the middle of the night and undressed down to her camisole and panties, because the hip only a few inches from her hand was smooth and bare, except for the thin band of bikini underwear. She heard a mutter and then Helena's breath resumed its even in and out. Myka snuggled her head deeper into her pillow, allowing the rhythm of Helena's breathing to lull her back to sleep._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps I should have set this out for it to, um, season before I posted it, but I'm trying to keep to my (self-imposed) schedule. I decided to crank out another chapter of this fic instead of keeping to my fic rotation because the previous chapter didn't get quite get me where I wanted to go. If it doesn't quite gel, well, maybe that's because Myka's all over the place herself . . . .

Pete hadn't asked her how the meeting with Bobby Olson had gone, but Myka felt compelled to volunteer the briefest of summaries, if only because, temporarily allowing herself to be visited by Helena's paranoia, she wanted it on record with someone in authority that she and Helena had questioned Bobby about the stolen jewels, just in case anyone asked. They were sitting at the conference table in Pete's office, well past working hours, and he had his hand in a family-size bag of M&Ms, pretending to listen to her. "Okay," he said, tipping his head back and throwing some M&Ms into the air, his mouth not quite big enough or fast enough to catch all of them. As a few dropped onto the table, Myka attributed the misses to speed (or lack thereof) rather than size because she was comfortable in her assessment that he could gulp down the bag itself were someone to toss it up for him. "Stress eating," he said, picking up the ones he had missed and popping them into his mouth. "Amanda and I are expecting number three."

"Do you want my congratulations?"

He cocked his eyes at the ceiling before rolling them back to look at her. "Get back to me about that in a week, after I've stopped peeing my pants at the thought." He drove his hand into the bag again. "Nothing like a baby on the way to make you decide whether you're serious about someone. Just saying, if you're on the fence about Sam. . . ."

"I'm not going to shoot craps with a fetus, Pete," she said it more irritably than she had intended. She knew he was only joking.

"I'm sure you have all of Sam's little soldiers wearing protective gear. No unintended consequences for you." She could have sworn he said "Or fun" under his breath, but he was too busy trying to catch the shower of M&Ms raining down on them. His jaw was opening and snapping shut so fast as he chased the M&Ms that he reminded her of a fish scouring the surface of a fish tank for food.

What was it about her and kids suddenly? Or, more accurately, what was it with other people talking about her and kids? On Sunday it had been Helena and Jemma; on Tuesday, when she had snagged Steve for five minutes to ask him to take over for her on the following Sunday, he had squinted at her curiously and said, "I thought you and Christina were best buddies, you know, as much as a four-year-old and someone who's 30 years older can be." Now it was Pete. She had never seriously thought about having children. It was a conversation that, when she and Sam were married, they had mutually agreed to put off having for five years and, of course, by the time the five years were up, they were already divorced.

Maybe she was a little sensitive about the subject because she felt, absurdly, that she was letting Christina down. She had been telling herself since Sunday that Christina wouldn't care which agent accompanied Helena on her visits, but she feared her self-assurances weren't entirely true. While she didn't seriously entertain Jemma's suggestion that she and Helena and Christina were becoming a "unit" - for one thing, it would require that she and Helena express more than their distrust and resentment of each other - she knew how important routines could be for kids, especially if they had already experienced a major disruption in their lives. At least she had always been able to count on Warren Bering's disapproval; in fact, it was those rare moments when he seemed to suspend his criticism that had unnerved her the most as a child.

She didn't like the thought that she was the one introducing a change to Helena's Sunday visits; predictable, reliable, responsible Myka didn't not show up just because someone said or did something that got under her skin. Wasn't she proving Jemma right by not picking up Helena and driving out to the island on Sunday? Christ, she was acting just like her father, making a child pay for her fit of pique. Then Pete, with his impeccable sense of timing, decided to play the boss, the clown only half-successfully catching, and eating, the candy he tossed at his mouth becoming the team leader decisively assigning cases - and other tasks.

"It's about time for an unscheduled visit to Foxy Mama's lair. Why don't you and Steve plan to do that tomorrow night?"

"I thought Steve and I were surveilling DeWitt."

"And he's done nothing for a week, right? Maybe he got spooked or maybe he's catching up on his favorite shows on Netflix." Pete folded down the bag of M&Ms. "I don't want her getting comfortable, Mykes. I'm getting pushed by Justice. She needs to tell us how she's going to deliver Burdette."

"We're working on something, I promise," she said, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice. It was one thing to be noticeably irritable with Pete when he was being her friend, it was another when he was being her boss. While she didn't like the humid discomfort of sitting in a parked car with the AC off for hours at a stretch, she didn't like the feeling of giving up on DeWitt either. She knew that Pete wasn't jettisoning the case just as she knew that Christina's disappointment at not seeing her on Sunday would be fleeting at best, but she felt that both, the unproductive surveilling of DeWitt and her decision to have Steve pull watchdog duty on Sunday, pointed to some flaw in her. She also knew there was no connection between those two things and Pete's assigning her to search Helena's apartment, but it felt like punishment all the same. Grouchily she complained, "Isn't there someone else you can send?"

"Not when the point we want to make is that we're not her friends."

"I think she's pretty clear on that."

"Then she shouldn't have a problem with you going through her undies drawer. She may not like it, but she'll know it's your job." His look was cool. "Unless you have a problem with it, and if you do, I'd like to know that now."

Here was her out. It would be graceless, she would look like someone who couldn't do what was asked of her, but would it be any worse than the humiliation she had gone through after the Marston Gallery heist? Helena had a plan, and if she could convince Justice that it would work, she would be assigned another agent, that was all that would happen. Myka needed only to say the words. I can't do it. She's too much for me, she always was. I have feelings, I don't know what all of them are, but they're too many. It didn't happen nine years ago or eight years ago, it happened yesterday, it's happening now -

"No problem," she heard herself say.

"Good." Pete slapped the table. "Let's blow this popsicle stand." He grinned at her, friend again, partner again, the boss and team leader put away for the day, but she couldn't be any more truthful with this Pete than with the other one. "Gotta stop by a store on the way home. Flowers, 'cause I want to show her that I'm happy about this, and maybe I'll start stocking up on the Cheerios, just in case she has morning sickness with this one too. Only thing she could ever keep down."

Tracy's brush with morning sickness had been so slight as to have been nonexistent, and she hadn't had the cravings either, but she had had the back problems and the hemorrhoids. Pregnancy, captured in monthly phone calls and experienced more than half a continent away, had always seemed to Myka a strangely lengthy irruption marked mainly by complaints and urgings for the baby to "just get here already." It came, it lasted, it went away, she had no sense of it as a process, of one phase leading into the next. She might feel differently about it if she had had to live with it. But Pete had talked about Amanda's pregnancies only when they had negatively impinged on his work; he wouldn't be in the office until later in the morning because Amanda had a doctor's appointment, he hadn't slept the night before for Amanda's tossing and turning, he was eating Myka's Twizzlers because all there was to eat in the house was Cheerios and while he liked cereal as much as the next man, he could eat only so much of it. Unbidden images of Helena eating endless bowls of pistachio pudding or holding her hand over her mouth at the smell of popcorn or adjusting a heating pad behind her back flitted through Myka's mind. Had anyone been there to make the pudding for her or to throw the popcorn into the garbage or had Helena, like the cat Christina sometimes pretended she was, scratched out a sanctuary where she could hunker down, alone, and given birth there?

Myka rolled the beer bottle across her forehead. The headache had started before she finished locking her desk drawers for the night and continued through a workout during which she hadn't so much listened to the music blaring through her ear buds as she had used it as a soundtrack for that stupid weekend that she and Helena had spent in the Berkshires. She hadn't thought about it for years, but ever since Helena had shown her the warehouse where she had worked on her forgeries, Myka hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, not entirely. Crossing her feet on a coffee table that held no magazines, no books, no coffee, only a coaster to absorb the condensation from the bottle and a take-out container of partially eaten noodles, she lectured herself that it was these breaks in her self-control and in the discipline of her thought that had had her almost asking to be taken off the assignment. Obsessing about how Christina would take her no-show on Sunday, thinking about the trip to the Berkshires, and now having images of a pregnant Helena lodged in her mind, she was letting herself be consumed by the case but not in the way she wanted to be or should be. Her phone, almost swallowed by the gap between the sofa cushions, began to buzz; it was Sam, asking her if she wanted company. Not really, but she was in need of a distraction.

He had tried his best, but as it had been between them lately, he rolled away in sleepy satisfaction while she stared at the ceiling half the night. Looking at Sam in the gray light of the early morning, the drapes, partially drawn across the balcony doors, succeeding only in filtering the sunlight, not blocking it, Myka realized she was thinking of Helena and thinking that the only thing she and Sam seemed to share was how deeply they slept. Those secure in their place in the fight against injustice and those secure in their indifference to it, they slept well and easily. The others, Myka smiled wryly to herself, they were the ones who watched their clocks and stared at the ceilings. She had twenty minutes before her alarm went off and she had already been watching it for twenty minutes. They had set no alarm in that bedroom in the Berkshires, certainly not that first night and not the next one, their last one. Their flight back to New York wasn't until 4:00, and Helena had been anxious that Myka rested as much as she could.

She had been clumsy, which was never surprising but even less so that day since she had been wearing hiking shoes that she hadn't yet had a chance to break in, because she had bought them only that morning, along with her trail pants, pullover, and a factory-distressed broad-brimmed hat that Helena had talked her into with the impish observation that it gave her a dash of Indiana Jones. They had been walking a trail, exclaiming over the views when they came upon breaks in the growth that showed them the surrounding hills, burning red and gold and orange. It must have been a rock or a twig under the sole of her shoe, and the shoe had been too stiff, too new for her to move in it as she would a shoe that had molded itself to the shape of her foot, and she had fallen, twisting her ankle as she went down. It didn't feel like a bad sprain initially, but she hadn't been able to walk it off, and Helena had to help her back down the trail when the pain grew too intense, bearing Myka's weight as Myka hopped on one leg beside her, arm slung around the back of Helena's shoulders. With patient good-humor and a concern calibrated to sound sufficiently unconcerned, Helena had shepherded her into their car and then, once back at the bed and breakfast, up the stairs to their room. Elevating Myka's foot on a stack of pillows, she had gotten ice and extra hand towels from the bed and breakfast's owner and prepared to examine the ankle.

Myka had glared at her foot, rapidly swelling in tandem with her ankle now that it had been released from its shoe, and, with equal frustration, had sworn at her talent for ruining, by one means or another, an occasion that was supposed to be fun and spending more money than she could afford on a spur-of-the-moment trip that was clearly turning out to be a waste of the money. She had cringed when Helena had carefully rolled down her sock. Exposing your feet wasn't quite as intimate an act as undressing in front of someone, but Myka believed that it came in a close second. If given a choice, she might choose to show her breasts instead of her feet. Her breasts were nicely shaped and of equal size, not that she was seeking a lot of outside confirmation that she had a pretty good set, but her feet . . . . It wasn't that she didn't try to take care of them, but she wasn't someone who went in for pedicures. She didn't paint her toenails with nail polish and she didn't use a pumice stone on every callus. Her feet were big too, long and with long toes. All she needed was a big shiny corn on one of her toes to complete the picture. But Helena was indifferent to the state of Myka's foot, gently probing her ankle and reassuring the both of them that the injury appeared to be nothing more than a sprain.

That night, her foot throbbing on its pillows, Myka had watched and listened to Helena sleep on the love seat. She squirmed more and she muttered more, and she snored - it wasn't very loud and, frankly, to be expected, given that the only halfway comfortable position on the love seat seemed to be one in which Helena was flat on her back with her legs hooked over the love seat's arm. But when Myka softly called out to her, during prolonged bouts of squirming or muttering, to come to the bed, Helena never responded, her restlessness no dependable indicator, it turned out, of how well she was sleeping.

Sam snuffled, as though he sensed the alarm was about to go off, and inched a tentative hand toward Myka. She sometimes wondered if he did it from a buried instinct to make sure that he knew who was in the bed beside him before he said the wrong name. She didn't think he was sleeping with anyone else but part of this . . . thing . . . they had was not to ask questions like that. Risky and stupid, true, and unlike her in some respects, but it was safer than forcing their feelings, whatever they were, out into the open. So, damn right, Sam's little soldiers, as Pete had called them, could march no farther than the end of a condom and, in the event that one or two somehow made their way out, they would meet a barrage of chemical agents, courtesy of whatever super-strength spermicide she had picked up at the drugstore. There would be no miniature Sams or Mykas; this "thing" couldn't encompass that "thing."

"Hey," Sam said, slowly, sleepily blinking one eye at her.

"Hey," she returned, smiling as Helena pushed herself up from the love seat, sleek, smooth black hair rumpled and bent at odd angles. She shook herself free of the blankets she had slept in and unself-consciously stretched, abdomen rising from low-slung panties and breasts nippling under the camisole as the cooler air of the room worked through the fabric. It was sexy and strangely comforting at the same time to see Helena padding about the room, the cheeks of her butt flexing and unflexing as she stooped to pick up the clothes she had bought yesterday, a decidedly not trail-worthy cashmere v-neck sweater complementing a pair of jeans so tight-fitting that had she worn a shirt underneath her sweater she wouldn't have had room to tuck it in.

Sexy, comforting, nice, the package Helena seemed to offer hadn't been enough to make Myka fall for her then; it would be months before they became lovers. But Helena had begun to inhabit Myka's space in a way that other co-workers and colleagues didn't. Daily proximity to those she worked with required that she redefine her personal boundaries. People she didn't know or like, or liked but didn't want to know any better, they crowded her space, sat next to her at meetings, hung out in her cubicle, handed her files and took the files that she handed to them. It was like walking through crowds; people touched her yet they didn't, not really. An intimacy that carried no significance, had no meaning, so that it didn't matter to her whether Linda was virtually breathing down her neck as she completed her portion of a report that was overdue to Bates or another agent. Pete had managed to cross those boundaries and create a Pete-shaped space so well-defined that she frequently knew when he was navigating the cube farm to get to her cubicle before he arrived. But the space that Helena was creating for herself . . . no, that wasn't the difference. Pete, with his horrible jokes and utter lack of discretion, he had barreled his way in once they were assigned as partners. Since they were going to be depending on each other, he was going to ensure that the back she was going to protect was a back she loved. Helena wasn't banging and thumping her way in; Myka was creating the space for her and all but putting out the welcome mat, Helena had only to step over the threshold.

As Sam gathered his clothes and took them into the bathroom with him, Myka had no difficulty visualizing his routine. He would pee and wash himself down quickly, the wet washcloth sometimes landing on the edge of the tub when he threw it, sometimes not. He would find his toothbrush and brush his teeth, frown at his receding hairline as he finger-combed his hair. He would have an internal ten second debate about using her antiperspirant and then decide he could wait until he got home and use his own. He would shrug on his clothes and -

"Left plenty of time for you to hop in and shower." He always said that or a variant of it as he kissed her, and she accepted his kiss but didn't kiss him back, which was also typical. She waited until she heard the apartment door click shut before she got up. This was Sam's space in her life, this third time around for them. Closer to her than the first one, farther away than the second, but it, like the others, no nearer to invading that dead man's zone of scorched earth and objects once familiar burned beyond recognition, which marked the space Helena had once inhabited. That weekend in the Berkshires had been the last time that Helena would remain a stranger, a possibility unexplored, had Myka only realized it then. It was the moment she could have still said "No, not her" and dismissed all the might have beens without a second thought. Instead she had hobbled to their car later that morning, ankle wrapped in an elastic bandage and wedged into the hiking shoe, thinking that there was more to Helena Wells than smugness, an undeniable prowess in certain fields, and a cavalier attitude toward all those courtesies that made teams work (such as not calling Pete a trained monkey in front of his partner). She just needed to give Helena the opportunities to let her other qualities shine.

The unscheduled inspection of Helena's apartment went like Myka thought it would, especially when she and Steve arrived only to find Claudia and her boyfriend, Todd, intertwined on the sofa. After a hard look at Helena, who glared back at her defiantly before she busied herself with a frozen pizza in the oven, Myka said, "Todd, what's your last name?"

"Don't answer that," Claudia immediately cut in, putting her fingers over his mouth. "He's not going to become part of whatever Bill of Rights-trampling database you have."

Todd looked anxiously from Claudia to Myka, scratching at his chin, on which an uncertain goatee was doing battle, poorly, with a particularly inflamed-looking patch of acne. He squirmed out from underneath Claudia's legs and began to edge his way toward the door. "I'm not trying to cause problems. I can just go."

"Not without giving us your last name and showing me your ID." Myka sent another hard look in Helena's direction. "You know you have to run your social contacts past us first, Helena. This is a violation of the terms of your release."

"Todd is not one of  _my_  social contacts. He's one of Claudia's, and when she stopped over tonight, I had no idea he would be with her." She pulled out the rack on which the pizza was baking and inspected its doneness. "If you want to be a hardass, fine. Report me to your idiot boss or your idiot boyfriend."

"The rules are meant to protect you as well, Helena," Myka said. "If you clear people with us first, it's fine if they visit you." Ignoring her derisive laugh, Myka turned toward Todd. "If you pass the check, we're not going to have problems with you dropping by with Claudia. Just give us the information we're asking for, and we'll run you through the system."

"No." Claudia rocketed up from the sofa, reaching for Todd's hand. Angling her face up at Myka, as if she might start leaping and snapping at Myka's nose, much like an enraged toy poodle, she said, "He's not giving you anything, Agent Fuckface. We're leaving."

"Claudia," Myka said warningly, leaning into her.

"Go," Steve interjected quietly, throwing open the apartment door. "We're not going to push matters this time, but if you want to bring your boyfriend with you to see Helena, he's going to have to be screened. Got that?"

"Fine," Claudia muttered, flicking her fingers at Myka and giving her shoulder a push. Taking a firmer grip of Todd's hand, she led him into the hallway, leaving Steve to shut the door behind them.

Helena was resetting the timer, but she allowed herself a sideways glance at Steve. "Her constant rule-following is wearing, isn't it? I feel for you." She squatted to peer at the pizza through the glass in the oven door. "Do what you have to do, agents." Her voice became ragged with anger. "Then get the hell out of here so I can save what I can of the evening."

They pulled out the sofa cushions and zipped open the coverings. They took the books from the bookshelves and riffled through them. Begrudgingly moving out of their way, Helena allowed them access to the refrigerator, and they opened containers stored in the freezer and went through the crisper drawers. They banged open cupboard doors and dumped the contents of the flour and sugar canisters. Steve called the duty on Helena's bedroom, and Myka could hear him opening and shutting the dresser drawers. Passing the bedroom on her way to search the bathroom, she saw him sitting on the side of the bed, painstakingly examining the lining of a suit jacket. Myka took off the lid to the toilet tank and shone a flashlight down the drains of the sink and tub. If she turned the water off, she could take apart the pipes, but she recognized that she and Steve weren't expected to find anything; the purpose of the search was mainly to keep Helena off-balance.

She was chewing a piece of pizza when they returned to the living room, her mouth slowing and her swallowing of the bite loud in the room when Myka asked her for her laptop and phone for an obligatory data dump. "You'll get them back tomorrow," she said.

"I haven't had a chance to call Christina yet. Can you give me ten minutes?" Helena put her pizza down on the counter.

Before Myka could respond, Steve was saying calmly and firmly, "Now."

Shaking her head in disbelief, Helena lifted her satchel from one of the chairs at the kitchen table and dropped it at Steve's feet. "I guess you can call my daughter for me. She likes a rousing rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" right before we say goodnight."

Steve sighed, slinging the bag over his shoulder. He nodded toward the door, but Myka said wearily, "Give me a moment or two."

"What infraction of the rules are you going to cite to me now, Myka?" Helena spun into the kitchen and flung open a cupboard. She slammed a mug onto the counter and roughly turned on the faucet to fill a tea kettle with water.

"The rule where we, you, deliver Burdette to Justice as soon as possible. You need to get that Phillips to him." Myka rubbed her neck. She wouldn't be settling for tea to drink when she got home.

With more care, Helena set the kettle on a burner. "I need to see pictures of the real  _Study in Gray No. 5_ , and it would be helpful to have them when I'm actually retouching the Phillips." Her voice was under better control, but the anger was still visible in the jut of her jaw and her noisy rummaging of the silverware drawer.

"You'll have it."

Helena's smile was thin in response to Myka's promise. "If I have something to work from, I could get most, if not all, of the retouching done, say, Saturday afternoon." With a brittle officiousness, Helena added, "That is, if I'm not taking up too much of your free time. I imagine you could always just ask Agent Sunshine to fill in if it's getting to be too much for you."

Myka didn't bother to respond. The staircase leading to the first floor was dark as always, the dim lights in the hallways as she descended seeming to enhance the gloom more than dispel it. While she expected Mrs. Frederic to quietly materialize as she thundered down the last steps, there was only Steve waiting for her at the bottom of them. He was unaffected by the darkness or the silence, saying with a studied off-handedness, "Did you smooth her ruffled feathers?" Myka shrugged in answer, hoping he would understand her evasion as a desire not to talk about Helena, which was no lie. "You can level with me, you know, about why you want me to take over this Sunday."

His sincerity felt warm, solid, like a hug, although she and Steve weren't huggers. They had no cause to be, despite having survived some scrapes that would have justified one; she imagined him hugging her like he shook hands, a quick, strong squeeze. "You don't have a backlog you need to catch up on," he teased. "Myka Bering doesn't have backlogs."

Only when it comes to work, she silently countered. Otherwise I'm happy to stay buried.

In the last fifteen minutes that the bookstore was open, Myka found a slim volume on Martin Phillips, and she hoped that the two photos of  _Study in Gray No. 5_  were good enough for Helena to work with. As the clerk at the cash register eyed its cover, which displayed a painting consisting of vertical bars in gray against a gray background, he observed unhelpfully, "Hardly anyone knows who he is anymore. You must be a fan."

"Recent convert." The last thing she would have imagined herself doing eight years ago was colluding with Helena to con someone, even if their victim was another criminal. The sense of having an entered an alternate reality, not a parallel reality of the kind Jemma had promoted in which she was still recognizably herself only much happier, but an opposite one, the  _Star Trek_  one, in which she became an evil version of herself was strong as she and Helena drove back to the warehouse in Hoboken on Saturday. According to her new reality's logic, Helena should be the angelic version of herself, but her grim expression as she had gotten into the car and her subsequent silence didn't forcefully argue for the conversion. Accompanying the book on Martin Phillips was a bag of new paints and paintbrushes. The rest of what she needed, Helena had curtly assured Myka, she could find in the warehouse.

Myka wasn't expecting that the warehouse would be open for business on a Saturday, but its doors were unlocked and men, albeit a smaller number of them, were again busily moving pallets. At the back, trucks were parked at a loading platform and crates were being forklifted from the pallets and stowed in the trucks' trailers. She considered the possibility that all the activity represented a legitimate business concern and then immediately dismissed it, not when a Wells was involved. Again, Helena stopped in her cousin's office, and again he showed no surprise at her appearance or interest in why she was there. The freight elevator that took them up to the second floor sounded no better than the first time Myka had ridden it but the alarming sounds of metal shearing and snapping off was just as much an empty promise now as it had been earlier in the week.

Once inside the studio, Helena dragged two easels toward the center of the room, where the light was the strongest. Unceremoniously she ripped a page from the Phillis art book that had a photograph of  _Study in Gray No. 5_  and attached it to one of the easels. Removing what looked like a utility knife from the pocket of her pants, a pair of faded jeans that boasted several smears of brown, gold, and white paint, souvenirs most likely of her kite-painting adventure, she waggled it over her shoulder at Myka, saying "Aren't you afraid I'll come to my senses and use it on you?", before walking over to where she had left the Phillips painting from their last visit. Taking it back with her to the easels, she placed it on the unoccupied one and began to carefully score areas of the canvas.

Myka had intended to remain observant, watching how Helena transformed a study into the  _Study_ , but although this room and their occasion for being in it bore little relation to Helena's old studio and Myka's visits to it more than eight years ago, Helena's air of absorption and her periodic circling away from the easel holding the Phillips painting were familiar, and Myka's attention began to drift. She sat on a corner of one of the tables in the room and took out her phone. She didn't need an intimate acquaintance with Helena's methods; they wouldn't tell her anything about Helena that she didn't already know. So while a crime, namely forgery, was being committed, she would catch up on her reading.

_Helena told her it was an open invitation; anytime that Myka wanted to drop by her studio, she should. She shouldn't worry about being a distraction, learning how not to lose focus when the world insisted on intruding was a necessity. Helena had given Myka one of her infamous smiles then, the sly curve to her lips seeming to hint that the secret she was about to share was really no secret at all, only a ruse to draw Myka in, to capture her attention. Distractions had their uses, Helena said softly. She was in town this weekend for a change, and she was going to spend the majority of it at her studio, trying to complete a few projects. So, if Myka found that time was hanging heavy on her hands . . . ._

_Myka had found the studio easily enough, a rented space in an old brownstone that had been converted to a mixed-use building. A law office and a hedge fund occupied the first floor; flats were on the second and third floors. Helena's studio was on the third floor, at the back of the house. Helena hadn't been surprised to see her when she opened the door, although Myka had said nothing about dropping in. Other than the easel and a work table, on which were scattered brushes, tubes of paint, and rags smelling of solvents, there was only a sagging leather sofa. Myka, finally feeling the nervousness that had been completely absent on her subway trip over, fluttered in front of the sofa until Helena, with a fondly chiding laugh, told her to sit down._

_Unsure where to look - the studio was smaller than she had anticipated, servants' quarters in another lifetime, two small bedrooms whose dividing wall had been removed - Myka felt that she was gawking at the painting Helena was working on or gawking at Helena, each of them revelatory in a way she hadn't expected. The painting was an unironic representational portrait of an older couple in a style that reminded Myka of a Sargent painting, although she couldn't have said why. Perhaps the attention given to the woman's evening gown, a shimmering, midnight blue sheath that pooled onto the floor like water or the couple's cool self-regard, which dared you to look away from them. Myka might have dared to look away if Helena didn't present a more dangerous object of fascination. She wasn't sloppily dressed in contrast to the husband and wife in their going-to-the-Met attire, she was barely dressed, smooth, pale skin showing in abundance in the gaps, openings, and rips of a shirt left unbuttoned or having precious few buttons to push through the buttonholes. The shirt was practically hanging open over a pair of chinos, only partially zipped because the zipper was broken. No panties were peeking through the fly, and Myka swallowed hard at the realization. It was winter, and who painted half-naked in a Victorian-era studio? She was cold and she was wearing a sweater._

_But Helena seemed oblivious to the cold. In fact, she twitched her shoulders under the shirt as if it was too warm for her . . . Myka intently studied her hands. She needed to attend to her cuticles. Maybe if she said something, anything, even if it only resulted in Helena telling her that she didn't talk while she painted she would feel less like she was interrupting the kind of absorption that would eventually have Helena dreamily digging her hand beneath the waistband of her pants. "You accept commissions?"_

_Helena nodded, then shot a rueful glance at her. "While I wish more people wanted a Helena Wells because it's a Helena Wells, a lot want something 'in the style of,' and for better or worse, that's what separates me from the others . . . who are better," she finished quietly. She pointed with her brush at the painting. "I can do what's 'reminiscent' or 'suggestive' of a Sargent or a . . . a Pollock without it becoming a second-rate or third-rate Sargent or Pollock. At least that's what I think."_

_Still nerdy enough to be pleased that she had been right, Myka didn't miss the sardonic emphasis Helena had given "I." Standing up and joining her in front of the painting, Myka cocked her head, pretending to give it a studied assessment. "Don't you have to be rediscovered in order to be truly discovered? Otherwise you're a flash in the pan, a comet streaking across the sky, destined to die early and tragically. Thwart all the critics by living a long and happy life that's capped off by your work taking the world by storm when you're 80."_

" _Sweet thought, but I'm not a believer in delayed gratification." Helena's voice held a smile, but she wasn't smiling. "I want everything now because it may not come around again."_

_Myka felt like she was standing on tip-toe, although she wasn't. Her feet were flat in her shoe sneakers, but she clutched at Helena's shirt as if she were about to lose her balance. Against the brush of her palm she felt Helena's nipple harden, and as Myka's hand curved around her breast, Helena arched into the caress. Their mouths met, and Myka thought they would slow down now, kiss a little, and let the kissing help make the decision for them because she liked to have the time to decide if this was something she wanted to do, if this was the person she wanted to do it with. She always wanted it to slow down, she never liked being so caught up in an experience that she might lose control. But the kissing wasn't slowing them, her, down, her hands were already tearing at Helena's pants, and she was pushing Helena backward, and Helena was letting her, until she heard the slight thud of Helena's back hitting the wall. It was awkward, standing up like this, except they really weren't so much standing as Helena was kind of crouching and she was half-supporting her while her hand tore at the chinos until she found what she wanted, what she couldn't wait for, she who could wait for everything, and she was groaning just as much as Helena and saying things she had never said to anyone, because there was so much in her that wanted out, so she found another release in words, and then Helena was coming so loudly that everyone in the building had to have heard her. They laughed a little as Myka relaxed her hold and Helena steadied herself on the floor. She hadn't been wearing underwear, and Myka had only to look at the hair, damp with sweat on her abdomen but wet farther down, and if she had had any hopes that they might slow down, they were gone in the twisting of her gut and the need to have Helena to touch her, enter her now. She was tearing just as frantically at her jeans and trying to kick off her shoes at the same time. She was starting to say things again, and Helena was echoing them and adding new ones of her own. Helena was the one who did the pushing this time, but to the sofa. "I can't do you against the wall . . . yet," Helena said, and it was the only complete sentence that she said in the next several minutes. The leather was cool, but the air felt even colder as Myka finally freed herself from her jeans and underwear and then, a little before she was ready because she hadn't had time to turn around, reposition herself, Helena was behind her, in her, and she realized as a crescending moan rose in her throat that she had been ready, had wanted it like this, and as Helena worked her, claiming her both in the words she hissed somewhere above and behind her ears and in how she touched her, Myka could gasp only yes, yes, yes._

Helena must have asked her . . . something . . . because otherwise Myka wouldn't be standing so close to her now and she wouldn't be turning away from the easel, on which the Phillips painting looked remarkably the same despite the scoring that Helena had done to it earlier and the frequent darting of a paintbrush toward it that Myka had caught out of the corner of her eye. Helena wouldn't be looking at her so expectantly unless she was waiting for a response to her question. There must have been a question since the other explanation, that Helena had been remembering the same moment was not possible. Myka had made the mistake before of thinking that Helena had divined where her thoughts had led her, and Helena had been nowhere near the conference room in which the Marstons had smirked their way through an interview or the corridors down which Myka had learned to walk without seeing her colleagues' suspicious and, ultimately, pitying glances and without hearing the murmurs that died away as soon as she drew near. Even when Helena had been with her in the studio she hadn't been with her, always being two, three, a million jumps ahead.

"It was different then," Helena almost whispered, "but it doesn't have to be like it is now between us." She lifted her hand, as if to touch Myka's face, but Myka grabbed it and squeezed, not gently.

"I won't let you in."

Helena worked her hand free from Myka's grip only to place it in the valley between Myka's breasts, fingers close together, not fanned out, not seeking more than to rest demurely, innocently, as if she wanted only to count the beats of Myka's heart. It steadily thumped away, and Myka was thankful that it was slower than the rest of her to go on alert. Her skin burned where Helena touched her, and it was all she could do not to flinch.

"But I haven't ever left, have I?" There was no playfulness to Helena's tone, and her next words revealed no triumph or satisfaction. "I have so much to say to you, but you're not ready to listen." A faint smile hovered on her lips. "You're doing your best not to listen to me now, but I need you to hear this. These past eight years? They've been a wasteland. That's the truth, and if it hadn't been for Christina, I'm not sure what would have become of me."

"You would have found some way of surviving." Myka stepped backward until Helena's hand fell away. "You need to finish the painting."

The smile flickered but didn't disappear, and Helena's eyes continued to search Myka's. "So much rage. Have you ever wondered what's on the other side of it?"

"Just more anger, Helena."

It had been a spur of the moment call; Myka hadn't expected her to answer. It was before 9:00 on a Sunday morning, too early for most people, but Myka had long since finished her workout and showered, and as she watched her Keurig labor to fill her coffee mug, she thought she ought to savor the day, her first Sunday off in weeks. Had the preceding Saturday been a different kind of Saturday, she might have spent the night with Sam and made plans with him, but Saturday hadn't been a different kind of Saturday, and after dropping Helena off at Irene Frederic's brownstone, the Phillips done and drying on its easel in the warehouse, Myka went downtown to the office, unable to bear the thought of going home because it had never been more than an address and a bed and she was in need of a burrow, something small and filled only with the comforting smell of her own scent and virtually impossible for her to be forced from, and she had settled in her cubicle and accessed every electronic file she could on Jim Wells and his daughter. There she had stayed until late in the evening, eating Twizzlers and Cheez-Its from the vending machine.

But today was not Saturday, so she made the call and was gratified, some 45 minutes later, to see Leena walking toward her and then slipping into a chair across from her. They were sitting outside the café on a tiny faux patio carved out from the sidewalk by virtue of a few stanchions chained together. Myka was sipping coffee that was not from a K-cup, and she was enjoying the heat of the sun on her bare arms and legs. Leena was wearing a sundress, an orange burst of summer that enhanced the liveliness of her expression, transforming the mild flirtatiousness with which she greeted their waiter into something altogether more seductive, or so Myka enviously concluded with a glare at the waiter. Why wasn't she dating Leena, she asked herself again. Because she's straight, because I'm with Sam, sort of, because -

"How are things going with Helena?"

Oh, and because of that, too. "About as well as can be expected." Myka gazed down into her coffee cup. She needed a refill. She didn't want to stare into her cup too long, no need to give Leena the idea she was brooding, that she was bothered, that she still felt Helena's hand on her chest, still heard the ache in Helena's voice, because she wasn't sure which Leena was sitting across from her, the friend, the agent, or the therapist. The first was the one she had called, the third she probably needed, but she feared that the second was what Leena was first and foremost.

"Which is why Steve's babysitting Helena today?" Leena beamed another flirtatious smile at the waiter, who eagerly bounded to their table, promising Myka he would come back with a carafe of coffee, while his eyes never left Leena.

Myka sighed. "How do you know these things? It's nothing we had to clear with anyone."

"I could be all mysterious-sounding and just say 'I know," but Steve thought you were wired and stressed-out when you asked him." As Myka groaned and sagged back in her chair, letting her head hang over the top of its frame, Leena said, "He knows how hard this is on you, so he worries. We all do."

"Why do I feel that anything I say about her, you're going to run back to Pete with it?" The table's umbrella blocked Myka's view of the sky. What she had was a good view of some rust stains on the fabric.

"Only if I think you might be in danger of compromising the assignment."

She was very good, Leena, so calm, so accepting, how could anyone not want to confide in her? She was her friend, Myka knew that. But would Leena consider that she was in danger of compromising her assignment if she told Leena that she wanted to believe what Helena had said about living in a wasteland or that she feared Jemma was right? She wanted to believe that Leena would trust her if she said, "Despite what it may look like sometimes, I have a handle on things," but the problem was she wasn't sure she could trust herself as she said it. The waiter was approaching their table, promised carafe in hand, and she waited until he had filled her cup before she spoke. It was much easier to casually meet Leena's eyes over the cup as she sipped from it and say equally as casually, "Trust me, the Helena situation is going about as well as anyone can expect with a felon who wants nothing more than to be rid of her jailers."

"'The Helena situation,'" Leena said with a lightly skeptical laugh. "That's some bureaucratese I didn't expect from you. But it's Sunday, so I'll roll with it." She never seemed visited by bashfulness or embarrassment, and while she might have thought 'the Helena situation' as clumsily dismissed it as it was phrased, she moved on gracefully to other subjects, a gallery opening she had gone to recently, a new restaurant she wanted to try, an exasperating telephone conversation she had had with her mother, a retired therapist living in North Carolina who regularly harangued her daughter about not plying her skills in communities "'where you can actually make a difference,'" Leema mimicked her mother's disapproving tone. "'Low income communities are desperate for quality, affordable mental health care' . . . ." She trailed off as she caught Myka checking her phone. "Are you expecting a call?"

"No." Myka flushed. She had been paying attention, but she was almost as familiar with Leena's mother's professional disappointment in her daughter as Leena was, and she had grown increasingly aware of how late in the morning it was. Steve lived farther away from Helena's apartment than she did. He would need to leave soon to ensure that he and Helena would be on time for her visit because Helena never failed to express her displeasure if she lost even a few minutes with Christina. When it wasn't irritating, it was cute how Helena would lean forward in the seat the closer they got, straining against her seatbelt as if she wanted nothing more than to flatten her face against the windshield to spot Christina all the sooner. Now that it was warmer, Christina would fly from the back porch as soon as Myka stopped the car, and she would hop like a demented bunny, holding her arms up for Helena to lift her. Myka put her phone away and concentrated on the remains of her egg-white omelet, wishing she had ordered the Belgian waffles Leena was eating without guilt.

She was dutifully recounting news about her own family, Tracy's desire to have a second child, her father's increasing indecisiveness about the smallest things (and the old Warren Bering had never been indecisive about anything), when she felt her phone vibrate. It was Steve, and Myka wasn't sure whether the sudden lurching of her heart was a good thing or a bad thing. Actually it was Paul, Steve's husband, profusely apologizing that Steve wouldn't be able to get Helena. "I took him to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant last night, and I guess it was really just a hole. He ate the shellfish, and that was the end of the story. He hoped he would be better in time to pick her up, but . . . ."

"Don't worry. I've got it. You tell him to concentrate on getting better." She heard a weak "Hey, Mykes" in the background before the call ended.

"So because Steve's sick you're going to do it. You're not going to ask anyone else?" Leena was looking at her, much too innocently, over her coffee cup.

"There's no time," Myka said. "We're going to be late as it is, which means Helena will be in rare form."

"What about me? I could do it. I like kids, and I'd like an opportunity to see Helena in a different environment." Leena squinted at her. "I thought you needed a break."

Myka had been digging for cash in the small leather knapsack that she used as a purse. She felt that she was too old for it, that it was something a student would use, but purses had always made her feel ungainly. She never knew how to carry them. Leena did. She had her purse open, a smart-looking clutch with a shoulder strap. It matched her dress. "My treat." As Myka hesitated, she said, "Go on." Myka still hesitated, feeling that Leena was . . . disappointed in her? But the smile Leena gave her was warm, although there was worry in her eyes. "You know, the whole getting over somebody thing? You have to let go of them first."

"So I've been told," Myka said wryly. She pushed her chair in and stepped over the chain hanging slack between two stanchions. A subway station was at the end of the street. Increasing her pace, she called and then texted Helena, never having to break stride; it had only taken years of practice.

Helena must have gotten one of the messages because she was sitting on the brownstone's stoop when Myka double-parked. They would be a half-hour late, and that would be with Myka speeding all the way, but Helena wasn't storming and raining invective. She seemed . . . shy . . . which wasn't a quality that Myka would normally associate with her. She was quiet getting into the car, and she stayed quiet on the ride, but unlike their silent drive to Hoboken, when anger had radiated from her she practically blushed when she looked at Myka. There had been countless opportunities for Helena, if she wasn't going to berate Steve for his inconvenient bout of food poisoning to berate her for their being late, to preen and declare her victory. Myka couldn't stay from her - that was what Myka expected to hear in a thousand cutting, sneering variations. Instead Myka resorted to turning on the radio just so there would be some noise in the car.

It wasn't until Christina began her mad bunny dance in the driveway that Helena smiled, a broad, delighted grin that seemed only to brighten the more when she exchanged glances with Myka. She didn't say anything, opening her door after a long pregnant moment that had had Myka unable to look away even though she was telling herself that the grin wasn't directed at her, Helena would have grinned just the same way at whoever was sitting beside her. She was still talking to herself, only in her mind of course, and not talking so much as shouting and screaming when Helena bent to pick Christina up and said, "Now it's  _our_  Sunday, pumpkin. We've gotten her back."

But Christina had no more wrapped her legs around Helena's waist and rested her chin on Helena's shoulder than she was squirming and reaching for Myka. "I want you to carry me, My-ka."

Helena released her, another smile, not as broad as her earlier one though decidedly more devilish, overtook her face. She watched as Myka, not smoothly, swung Christina onto her hip. "You're going to have to work on that."

Myka followed her to the back porch, Christina wiggling until she found a more comfortable position. She might look small, but she was solid, like her mother, and her inadvertent kicks against Myka's legs were sharp. She was chattering about pygmy goats, her friends at preschool, and the boy, also in her preschool, who picked his nose when Myka heard her say, "Nonni said you weren't coming, then Mommy said you were." Christina drew back, suddenly pensive. "Are you here with us the whole day?"

"Yes."

"And next Sunday too?"

"Yes."


	9. Chapter 9

Christina continued to call plaintively from her time-out on the stairs to the second floor, “Mommy, I’m sorry” and each time Helena responded, “I know you’re sorry, pumpkin, but you’re still in time-out.”  Sometimes a burst of sobs punctuated a plea and sometimes Christina said, even more piteously if that were possible, “My-ka, please tell Mommy I’m sorry,” which earned her only another maternal admonishment, on the order of “Don’t drag My-ka into this.”  Myka had thought she was inured to the pleading and weeping that followed when a child was punished; she had endured a four-year-old’s temper tantrums and the time-outs that were applied as a corrective before.  She had spent more than one holiday listening to her nephew beg for an end to his isolation only to watch him end up in another time-out a short time later.  But with Christina it was different, harder, it taking little more than the sight of her scraping her hair from her tear-stained cheeks to have Myka sending her own pleading looks in Helena’s direction.

“It kills you, doesn’t it?”  Helena murmured in amusement.  “I should’ve guessed that you’d be a soft touch.”

They were sitting in the living room, waiting for the last minute of Christina’s time-out to end.  It was passing much more slowly than the previous three.  The low point had come when Christina had pressed her face against the balusters, like a prisoner at the bars of his cell, and both Helena and Myka had had to turn their faces away to hide their smiles.  Jemma had purchased a plastic wading pool for Christina, convinced that the water was still too cool to be taking her to a beach.  To Myka it had seemed quaintly out of place in an area where nearly every home had a swimming pool; it was as if her gray-collar childhood had been transplanted to the Hamptons, or what qualified as next door to the Hamptons, but Helena hadn’t argued, filling the pool with water from the backyard hose and then tempering it with hot water drawn from a bathtub faucet until the temperature was sufficiently tepid to suit Jemma.  Christina had jumped in and out, sometimes sitting down in the pool and dunking her dolls beneath the water’s surface and claiming that they were diving in the ocean.  When her splashing became less accidental and more intentional, Helena had warned her to be good, but Christina had offered only a sly smile and, as Helena leaned closer, scooped up a handful of water and flung it at her.  Her face dripping, Helena had picked her daughter up and carried her into the house, speaking sternly to her all the while.  Christina has recognized the seriousness of her error only when Helena had deposited her on the stairs, and then the sobbing had started.

Myka checked her watch, and Helena, relenting, said, “Time-out is over, pumpkin.”  As Christina, tears forgotten, ran down the stairs, Myka gestured in the direction of the porch.  “I’ll go take care of the pool unless . . . .”

Helena mouthed ‘No’ as Christina crawled into her lap, and as she stroked her daughter’s hair, she rested her head against the back of her chair and looked up at Myka.  “Thank you.” 

With more difficulty than a simple “Thank you” should have engendered, Myka willed herself to look away; shutting her ears to Christina’s happy chatter about a game, apparently called Dolls, that she wanted to play with Mommy and My-ka, Myka returned to the backyard to empty the wading pool. She lifted the pool, tilting it until the water began to lap over the edge.  A puddle formed and grew larger, slowly shrinking as it began to seep into the ground.  The past couple of weeks had been quiet, which made her restless.  There had been no developments in the insurance fraud case; they continued to surveil DeWitt, but as they had discovered nothing suspicious in his activities, Pete was cutting back on how frequently they shadowed him.  Helena’s monitoring of social media had turned up nothing more interesting than the fact that a few of the jewelry theft victims -- and Barrington Academy alums -- were planning to participate in a charity 10K event.  Since Barrington was one of the sponsors, the coincidence of their participating in the same event seemed sufficiently plausible that Pete had been unenthusiastic about Myka’s suggestion that she sign up.  The registration fee was expensive, and it would have to come out of the team’s operating budget, but, with no signs of progress in the case, he ultimately hadn’t objected to her going.  Myka’s presence, particularly if DeWitt attended the event as well, might be tipping their hand, but, Myka had argued, they needed to do something.  So what if they were poking at a hornets’ nest?  Pete had laughed at that, albeit grimly, and he reminded her that the agency would be more concerned if the hornets scattered than if they stung her.

If they were waiting for Bryce DeWitt to show them that he was more devious than a bachelor with a taste for high-end sports cars would suggest, they were waiting for Nate Burdette to give them any sign that Helena had dangled the Bowdoin haul -- symbolized by the forged _Study in Gray No. 5_ \-- in front of him.  When Myka finally shared with Pete and Sam Helena’s plan for luring Burdette, which hadn’t happened until Helena finished doctoring her Phillips, they hadn’t tried to scuttle it, but Sam had worried aloud about it being enough to convince Burdette that Helena could give him the rest of the works, and that was assuming he hadn’t already pressured or bribed one of Gentleman Jim’s co-conspirators into disclosing their location.  Well aware of the irony of her words, Myka had spread her hands, saying, “We’re going to have to trust her on this.”  She suspected that Helena had already arranged to deliver the painting to Burdette, not trusting that the FBI or Justice wouldn’t try to interfere and offer up both her and the painting with all the subtlety of an exterminator setting out poison-laced nibbles for a mouse.  She had explicitly told Helena to let her know when she planned to make contact, but Helena first looked at her incredulously and then followed it up with the observation, dripping with acid, that “it would hardly look like I was trying to get one over on the FBI if I were to tell one of its agents that I was in communication with Nate Burdette.”  Myka had glared at her, muttering crossly “You know what I mean,” but hadn’t pushed her about it since.  As she shook the wading pool to rid it of any remaining water, she thought that it was probably past time to be asking Helena for an update.

Their own relationship over the past couple of weeks had been more . . . cordial, for lack of a better term, and Myka was reluctant to disturb the odd truce they appeared to have called after their second visit to the warehouse when Helena had fabricated _Study in Gray No. 5_ .  With the exception of an occasional gibe that one of them would direct at the other, as reflexively as one cat might hiss at another sharing the same small living space, they could almost be described as getting along.  Furthering the cause, Jemma had been more circumspect the past two Sundays, neither wistfully reminiscing about them à la _The Way We Were_ nor trying to divine what Myka might still feel for her daughter.  Nevertheless, this also made it the second consecutive Sunday that Jemma had absented herself for the majority of Helena’s visit.  The previous Sunday she had said she wanted to use the time to run errands that would be made more difficult if she had to take Christina with her.  This Sunday she had set up a late lunch date with a friend.  Both were reasonable excuses, but Myka couldn’t shake the feeling that Jemma was hoping to come home and find the two of them groping each other like adolescents.  The thought amused her as much as it appalled her, but she couldn’t deny that the memory of that winter afternoon lingered with her, when they had made love on the sofa in Helena’s studio, falling off it more than once in their enthusiasm.

That the memory could so easily distract her she found annoying; the occasions when it surfaced she found puzzling.  She didn’t recall the smoothness of the sofa’s leather under her back or the warm rasp of Helena’s breathing next to her ear late in the evening or in lulls during meetings or as she pounded the hell out of a treadmill.  Seeing Helena lazily smile at something that amused her or gather her hair to sweep it back over her shoulder didn’t summon that afternoon either.  If she had woken in the middle of the night with her hand between her legs reliving in a dream how Helena had left no part of her unclaimed, she would have understood why.  She would have hated the fact that a nine-year-old memory, and that memory in particular, still had the power to make her come, but she would have understood.  She had had sex with the unlikeliest of partners in the most familiar of places; that was how dreams operated.  But she thought of the studio at the oddest of moments, when a song sheared the air before the volume was turned down or when sunlight, fanning across skyscrapers, reflected so brightly off the glass that it seemed to have been bent back on itself.  A sudden, intense eruption, whether it was of sound or light or Helena into the center of her life, it was the same.   She had gone to Helena’s studio one Saturday afternoon, wearing her snow sneakers and a stretched-out pullover, no more expecting to have sex with her than she had expected the train she took to get there to derail or the building to collapse before she could ring the bell.  Yet it had happened, over and over again that afternoon, that evening, and the following day.  When she had dragged herself home Sunday evening, so sore she could hardly walk, her skin red and scratched and smelling of sex even after a shower and a (shared) bubble bath, she still couldn’t quite believe that it had happened.

It seemed impossible that something like that afternoon could erupt into her life again, but she had thought the same thing nine years ago, and she had been wrong.  The sense that the quiet between them could be disturbed and the fear that she might be the one to do it had had her taking a rare Friday afternoon break -- if you couldn’t be seen slacking off late on a Friday afternoon, when could you? -- to venture onto the floor below.  The team that investigated securities fraud didn’t share the cube farm with them and the other white collar crime teams; instead they shared space with the agents assigned to organized crime.  Maybe it was a coincidence that their cubes were larger, but hierarchy was always well defined, if not respected, and Myka suspected that the larger cubes weren’t the only marks of favor that the securities team enjoyed.  When she stopped at the largest of the larger cubes, however, Jonah Kim didn’t appear to be aware of any special privileges that he and his team had been awarded.  His desk looked like the contents of his wastebasket had been dumped on it, filled with candy and gum wrappers and empty cans of Mountain Dew and Red Bull.  Jonah looked as if he had been caught in the shower when the wastebasket was dumped; potato chip crumbs filled the creases in his slacks and melted chocolate dotted his dress shirt.  Rubbing a chin that hadn’t seen a razor in a few days, he apologized for the mess and waved Myka to a chair.

“Breakfast of champions,” he said tiredly, “lunch of titans, dinner of conquerors.”  He swept the litter off his desk into a wastebasket already full.  “What can I do for you?”

Myka was pretty sure there was no white to his eyes since all she could see was red, the crisscrossing lines of blood vessels a travel map of exhaustion.  Rising from the chair, she said, “You look like you’re swamped.  I’ll come back when it’s less crazy for you.”

“It’s not getting any less crazy ‘cause I don’t see myself getting out of here until midnight.  So distract me, please.”

“You were the lead agent on the fraud case that put Helena Wells in prison.  I’ve read what we have on it, what I have access to, anyway, and I still don’t understand how she became involved.”  Myka tried to find a comfortable position against the unaccomodating chair back, which felt as though plywood had been used for padding.  Jonah might have the bigger cube, but his chairs were no better than hers.

“Me neither.”  He idly scratched his head, leaving a clump of hair sticking up.  Myka might have said something except for the fact that the clump of hair joined others that had probably been the result of the same disarraying force.  If the top of his head was a field, it was covered with tiny black haystacks.  “To be honest, I think she must have done someone a huge solid because there was nothing about the scam that suggested a professional was behind it.”  Grunting, he bent over to pick up a stray gum wrapper from the floor.  “I take that back.  The software was pretty slick.  Whoever did that part knew what they were doing.”

In the case summary, Jonah had described the fraud as a Ponzi scheme.  Based on the size of their investments, investors were offered tiers of services and products.  The premium tier had included tax and estate planning services in addition to investment advice provided by Advantage Finance’s “world-renowned . . . industry-leading . .  award-winning experts.”  Pulling his own copy of the case file from a desk drawer, Jonah snorted at the hyperbole.  “Nowhere in the literature do they indicate who these ‘experts’ are.  And look at the ‘24/7 investment advice - no matter where in the world you are.’  What are they, an investment firm or a customer call center?”  He dug in the same desk drawer, ultimately passing to Myka a brochure describing Advantage’s offerings.  “My eleven-year-old could do a better job of the design and layout.”

That was a harsher assessment than Myka would give it, but the stock photos of smiling models in business suits or cardigans and casual slacks, representing Advantage’s financial experts and satisfied clients respectively, could have as easily been part of the promotional materials for a law firm, real estate agency, or senior living center.  The graphics were just as generic, and Myka spotted a couple of typos, “planing” for “planning” and “portfollio” for “portfolio.”  For a firm that touted the expertise of its analysts, an expertise that guaranteed above-peer yields, Myka would have expected a better edited and more sophisticated-looking brochure.  She wouldn’t have been surprised to find something like this stuck in the corner of her mailbox, among all the other cheaply produced mass advertisements.  Handing it back to Jonah, she said, “It’s amateurish, but some people would have focused only on the promise of ‘above-peer yields.’”

He threw the brochure back into the drawer.  “Where we went for our introductory meeting?”  He shook his head in disbelief.  “The only good thing I can say about it was that at least it wasn’t in a motel room, which I was kind of expecting by then.  It turned out to be a dingy suite in a rundown office park.  The receptionist was playing solitaire on a 1990s desktop when we came in, and she didn’t know which room to take us to.”  He described the furnishings in the conference room in which he and his partner waited for an Advantage vice president as “provided by IKEA . . . maybe cheaper than that, maybe Target.”  The vice president was Helena, and Jonah had had no problem recognizing her “because there’s not an agent in this place who doesn’t have her burned into his mind as ‘what not to do when you’re looking for outside help.’”

She had called herself Stephanie, and Jonah chuckled, recalling her dead-on Jersey accent.  But she had seemed off, like the rest of the set-up.  He didn’t want to say that she looked like she had just rolled out of bed because she was wearing a pantsuit that probably cost more than the suite rented for and she had put on make-up, but there were bags under her eyes and she seemed distracted.  “I didn’t realize it at the time, but she looked like my wife and I did when our kids were little.  Sleep-deprived, kind of out of it.”  She had stumbled through the presentation, calling the reports by the wrong names when she was demonstrating Advantage’s “unparalleled financial reporting system” and appearing mystified by the screen progression on her laptop, unsure why clicking on a link in the bond yields report would take her to a graph displaying the stock prices of companies that had recently completed IPOs.  “She wasn’t familiar with the reports or the software that generated them.  Emily and I kept looking at each other like ‘Why is she here?’”  He fingered the edge of the file folder, lifting the cover and then letting it drop, as if something about its contents still disturbed him.  “I had this weird thought, ‘She doesn’t want to run this con,’ and it wouldn’t leave me.”  Stephanie/Helena hadn’t wanted to take their check, encouraging them to think over what they had seen thus far of Advantage before making a decision to invest.  She praised Advantage’s competitors and emphasized that Advantage wanted to ensure its clients believed that Advantage’s investment strategies were a perfect match for their financial goals.  “It was as though she was trying to tell us that the company was a giant hoax without really saying it.”

Slumping in his chair with a sigh and mournfully eyeing the empty soft drink cans in the wastebasket, Jonah said he had wanted to walk out then, no money exchanging hands, no arrests made.  He and his partner, in deciding to present themselves as a husband and wife open to a certain amount of financial risk-taking, had mutually agreed that he should be the insistent one, the one ready to throw caution to the winds, while Emily would be the cautious, conservative one, worried that her husband would invest everything they had saved into Advantage’s higher-risk investment products.  When he began to nod his head at Helena’s advice to sleep on it, however, Emily . . . . “Emily acted like she was possessed, practically cramming our check down Helena’s throat and saying that we had made up our minds and where did we sign.  I honestly think that if Helena hadn’t been so exhausted she would have caught on to what was happening, but she just started mechanically doing stuff, finding contracts, having us sign them, and then it was all over, and Emily had the cuffs on her.”

Jonah put his file in the drawer and softly shut it.  “She sat there, looking at the handcuffs.”  Helena hadn’t said anything, except to plead with them not to arrest the receptionist, who was from a temp agency and had nothing to do with Advantage Financial.  He and Emily had brought in the receptionist as well but let her go when it became clear that she was as clueless about the true purpose of the company as Helena had said she was.  Helena had refused to answer any questions until her attorney was present, and the attorney “hardly let her answer anything we asked her.”  Jonah and Emily hadn’t let her silence deter them, pressing her for the names of her partners in the scam, but they weren’t successful at wheedling or coercing them from her.  Given how quickly she had managed to leave the country after the Marston Gallery heist, a judge refused her attorney’s request for bail, and Jonah had been sure that alone would make Helena start volunteering information, having discovered in the course of the investigation that she had a toddler daughter currently in the care of her grandmother.  Yet Helena had been proof even against the prolonged separation from her daughter.  Hoping victims of Advantage Financial would come forward, Jonah and his team had reviewed the company’s client list only to realize that Advantage had no clients to speak of.  While he and Emily hadn’t been the only prospective investors, the company’s founders, who seemed to be limited to Helena at this point, hadn’t done much in the way of marketing its services or identifying the type of people they wanted to target.  Like so much else about Advantage, the absence of a well-defined plan to lure customers in seemed yet another indication that “we were dealing with novices or some of the stupidest criminals in the country,” Jonah said.

“This sounds so small-time,” Myka said, frowning.  “How did you even hear about it?”

“An anonymous tip,” Jonah said.  “We had always tagged the caller as a partner who felt he had been screwed over, but we’d assumed the operation was actually operating, that he had a reason to believe he had been screwed over.”

“It was a man who gave you the tip?”  Myka reviewed in her mind the men who might have known of Helena’s latest venture and had the motivation to turn her in.  It wasn’t hard to start listing names.

“Or a woman with a really bad cold,” Jonah joked.  The gust of his laugh died away, and he passed his hand over his hair.  “She never cracked, and we knew it ate at her, being away from her kid.  The guards would bring her in for another interrogation session, and we could tell she hadn’t slept, and her face was puffy, like she had been crying for hours.  We weren’t above tormenting her about the kid, how her daughter was missing her, how she was looking at enough prison time that her daughter would be a mother by the time she got out, and though she came close to breaking, she just never quite did.”  He looked more than a little mournfully at Myka.  “Maybe her attorney was feeding her all this bullshit about how the fact that she didn’t have a criminal record and that Advantage hadn’t really fleeced anybody would get her a light sentence.  Maybe she thought whoever she was protecting would come forward.  But they didn’t, and everyone in the courtroom, including the judge, knew what she had gotten away with in Houston.  The judge gave her the maximum and said she wished she could give her more.”  Another humorless laugh escaped him.  “The only one who looked worse than Helena Wells when she heard the sentence was this red-headed girl who had been there every fucking day.”

“Claudia Donovan,” Myka volunteered softly.  She almost lost her balance as she got up from the chair, and Jonah held out a hand to steady her.  Her legs and back ached; she hadn’t realized how tensely she had been holding herself as Jonah had talked.  On the one hand, it made sense now, Helena’s involvement in the securities fraud, if she wanted to view it as a self-sacrifice.  On the other hand, viewing it as a self-sacrifice made it all the more incomprehensible.  Helena could play the martyr but she would never choose to be a martyr.  Even if it had all been one royal screw-up, Helena getting involved only because she had been assured there would be no consequences, it still didn’t explain why she hadn’t offered up the Donovans and whoever else had been involved for a reduced sentence.  Recognizing that Jonah’s attention had strayed to a corner of his desk where case folders were stacked on top of each other, Myka hastily thanked him for his time.  She knew what it was like to be buried in several ongoing investigations, all requiring analysis and write-ups.  It was good to surface for a few minutes and think about something else, but eventually the weight of the work began to pull you back down.

Since Friday she had found herself returning again and again to what Jonah had told her, trying to fill in the gaps (who had left the anonymous tip, why Helena had decided, obviously at the last minute, to step in for someone else) and failing each time to create a narrative of the misadventure that was both coherent and true to what Myka knew of Helena’s character.  While Helena might have been willing to risk a lot for Claudia, she wouldn’t have risked Christina.  Carting the wading pool into the garage, Myka toyed with the idea of asking Helena about Advantage Financial -- and this was only the hundredth time since Friday that she had considered just putting it to Helena, bluntly and honestly, to see what she would get in return -- and dismissed it.  It didn’t matter whether Helena was capable of telling the truth, Myka knew she wasn’t ready to hear it, not from her.

She knew that Helena’s claim that the past eight years had been a wasteland was dramatic overstatement, just as she knew Helena’s reaching out to press a hand between her breasts had been a ploy meant as much to unnerve her as to punctuate eight years of loneliness.  It had been theater that moment between them in the warehouse, but she wanted to believe, too much, that it hadn’t been all theater.  So she would continue to turn the securities fraud over and over, seeking the hidden latch that would unlock it and reveal how it had worked because it couldn’t have been what it seemed in Jonah’s recounting, a screw-up, an ugly collision of Claudia’s inexperience and Helena’s belated, and misguided, attempt to protect her.  No more than Helena’s silence could be attributable to an overconfidence that she would escape punishment this time too.  There must have been more at work because otherwise she would start hearing the truth in what Helena said, seeing the longing behind her self-protective anger and sarcasm, understanding that what had happened eight years ago had been another screw-up, having as much of the accidental and unintended as the calculating and designed --

“We thought you might have fallen into the wading pool,” Helena said, peering at her through the gloom of the garage, Christina holding onto her hand.

Myka tipped the pool against the wall, judging that Jemma should have more than enough space to clear it when she returned.  “Would you have thrown me a life preserver?”  She ruffled Christina’s hair, avoiding Helena’s eyes. 

“Yes,” Christina said, enthusiastically nodding her head in affirmation.  “I would’ve gave you a ‘server, Myka.”

“Do you even know what one is?”  Myka asked indulgently

“No,” Christina said, giggling.

“Remember, she throws like a girl.  It probably wouldn’t have reached you.”  There was laughter in Helena’s voice, but even in the garage’s dimness, Myka could tell that Helena was anxiously squinting at her, unsure whether the question had been tease or jab.  Myka wasn’t sure herself.  She followed them back into the house, ready to be distracted by a game of Dolls.  Later, as Helena and Christina went through their protracted good-byes, this being a good Sunday for Christina as she chirruped “Good-bye, Mommy” and held her face up for kisses (on other Sundays, she would cry and huddle in a corner of the sofa), Myka’s thoughts drifted back to Helena’s role in the Advantage Financial scam and forward to how she might already be in collusion with Nate Burdette.  If Helena had already delivered the Phillips to Burdette, there was little she could do about it now, but she wouldn’t let Helena control the situation.  She would insist on being part of any future communications that Helena had with him.

Feeling a tug on her pant leg, Myka looked down at Christina, who was looking at her expectantly.  She had started this last Sunday; apparently no longer content with a wave and a smile, Christina demanded that Myka give her a kiss too.  Myka bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “Be good for your nonni, and I’ll see you next Sunday, okay?”

Another series of enthusiastic nods and then Christina was running across the living room to join Jemma in the kitchen.  Helena’s gaze followed her daughter, and her wistfulness was undisguised.  Myka touched her arm.  “Let me buy you a burger, I want to talk about Burdette,” she said quietly.

Within walking distance of her apartment building, there was a bar that enjoyed a steady flow of business on Sunday evenings, mainly because it was unrepentantly old school, no craft beers, no reimagined comfort foods.  If you were happy with Michelob on draft and a plain hamburger, it was the place for you, and although Myka wasn’t a frequent patron, she had visited it enough that the regulars no longer took notice of her.  Their indifference would assuage Helena’s worries about Burdette having ears everywhere, and the two of them could talk about him freely.  Helena had looked up curiously through the windshield at the apartment building above when Myka had keyed in the code to the underground garage. Pointing at the windows, she had asked which apartment was hers, but Myka hadn’t answered.  She had taken them up in the elevator only as far as the lobby; this was her space, and while Helena’s presence was everywhere else, in the office, in the off-time on Sundays that she had never used as off-time, in her thoughts, she would enforce this boundary.

Once in the bar, Helena had looked askance at the no-nonsense interior, the walls’ stark, painted plaster that lacked sports memorabilia or movie posters, the tables empty of all but salt and pepper shakers and squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard, displaying no advertisements for drink specials, no wine lists.  Sliding down a bench seat that was proudly leatherette instead of leather, she murmured, “I’ll try not to let this go to my head.”  A man as simply outfitted, in a gray t-shirt and black jeans, came out from behind the bar to take their drink orders and give them a one-page menu.  Helena turned the menu over to the blank back and laughed; it carried, light and amused as if they were really on a date, but none of the drinkers or Yankees fans catching the game on the flat screens -- the bar’s one concession to the contemporary -- turned to look at them.  Flicking a sardonic glance at the glass of ice water in front of Myka, Helena said, “Isn’t that enough to get you kicked out of here?”  She took a sip of her Guinness and held her glass up in a victory salute.  “Here I am pulling you from the fire again.”

“Only when you’re not pushing me into it.”  As Helena let her eyelids sweep down in what might have been rueful acknowledgment, Myka reminded her, “I have to drive you home.”

“You don’t have to.  You don’t live far away.  You can always let me stay over in the guest bedroom . . . or the side of the bed that the Neanderthal occupies, if it’s free.”  Her eyes were opening slowly, slyly, and Myka used their waiter’s reappearance at their booth as an excuse not to answer.  He carried no order pad, only jerking his head at their unsurprising request for two burgers and announcing in response to Helena’s question that cheese was two dollars extra and limited to American and cheddar.  “I’m surprised that the buns aren’t extra,” she grumbled as he walked away.

“If you want them buttered and toasted, it’s 50 cents extra,” Myka said.

Helena rolled her eyes.  “Let me call him back,” she said sarcastically, “and order the works, or would I be busting the agency’s budget?”

“I’m paying for it, Helena, so if you want your buns buttered, go for it.”  Myka grinned.

“If this had been a date, I would’ve been asking you to butter them.”  Helena tried to say it playfully, but her voice trailed off and she wagged her head back and forth.  “But it’s not, is it?  You want to know if the painting’s been delivered to Nate.  Yes, it has, and if that’s all you brought me here to find out, you can take me home sans burger.”  Not only had her playfulness dimmed, but she seemed suddenly weary as well, her mouth pulling down at the corners and her hand raking through her hair.  “He may not bite at the apple.  If he does . . . .”  She let her voice trail off again.  “Your Neanderthal better know what he’s doing because there are no second chances with Nate, no time for second thoughts, really.  Either this trap works, or I’m dead.”

Myka studied the compressing line of Helena’s mouth, the dark stare she was giving the Guinness.  It was a convincing portrait of anxiety, much like her declaration and her quiet urging that “it doesn’t have to be like it is now between us” in the warehouse had seemed sincere . . . more than sincere, but Helena wouldn’t leave herself with only two options.  “Or you direct the FBI and the Justice to an empty storage unit while Burdette makes off with the Bowdoin paintings.  Meanwhile he’s spirited you, Christina, and Jemma out of the country.”

“If I had wanted to sell myself to Nate, I could have done that while I was still in prison.  It’s not as simple as exchanging the paintings for my freedom.  I would still owe him, I would always owe him.”  A woman, also dressed in what was the bar’s uniform, apparently, a gray t-shirt and black jeans, set their plates in front of them and, with the taciturn efficiency of her co-worker, refilled Myka’s glass and unsmilingly squeezed into the “Another Guinness?” that she directed at Helena, the “Anything else I get you?,” “Enjoy your meal,” “Just let me know if you need something” that wait staff in other places would have delivered in precisely timed intervals.  The second Guinness duly deposited on the table, Helena revolved the glass between her fingertips before picking up her first, unfinished Guinness and draining it.

“Charlie was never able to cut ties with him.  He and Nate had been friends since they were children, and the bond went deeper with Charlie than family.”  She removed the bun, looked at the patty, and put the bun back on it.  “And why wouldn’t it, given our family?”  She pushed the plate aside.  “Charlie went to prison for him, more than once.  But the last time, he said something that got back to Nate that Nate didn’t like.  Not too long afterward, the guards found Charlie in his cell.  Nate always has the last word, even if he’s not part of the conversation.  So your Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Martino,” her tone was no less biting now that she called him by name, “he didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already heard, but the photo of Charlie’s body . . . I hadn’t seen it,” she finished softly.  Glancing at Myka’s plate and the bottle of mustard that she held over her hamburger, Helena sighed.  “Sorry, I don’t mean to ruin your appetite, but you need to understand that I won’t be jetting off into the sunset with Nate, not unless I want a chain around my neck and, strangely enough, I prefer the ankle monitor to being kept by him.”

Myka didn’t immediately respond, squeezing an S stripe of mustard on her hamburger.  “If you’re not playing us for fools, you shouldn’t mind my becoming part of the sting.”  As Helena’s eyes widened, she said, “If you meet with Burdette, I want to be there.”  She bit into the burger and chewed a bite, not certain whether she was successfully giving off an unconcerned air or resembling a cow doggedly working over her cud.

“I was expecting a wire, and though neither the FBI’s level of technology nor its ability to anticipate inspire me with confidence, including you as a partner would be disastrous.”  Helena leaned into the table, and Myka almost expected to feel Helena’s finger poking her in the center of her forehead, as her mother would do when she thought Myka needed some sense drilled into her.  “I thought I was being clear about how dangerous Nate is.  He killed Charlie over an insult, or what he thought was an insult, and Charlie was like a brother to him.”  She paused.  “Until Nate decided they weren’t brothers.  I can’t do what I need to do with you there, Myka.”

“You stole art worth millions of dollars by lying to my face every day,” Myka said it steadily, neutrally, because it was a fact, after all.  She smiled wryly, her eyes never leaving Helena’s.  “I have faith in you.”

“I’m not the same woman I was then.  I have you to thank for that.”  Her wryness matched Myka’s.

They continued to look at each other, not defiantly, more, Myka decided, like they were trying to take each other’s measure, to determine just how stubborn the other one was going to be.  “You’d better eat it.”  She gestured to Helena’s hamburger.  “It’s getting cold.”

“Colder.”  Helena eyed her warily as she nibbled a kettle chip from her plate.  “You always went all out.  Burgers, hot dogs, pizza.  Going out to dinner with you was the equivalent of buying a bottle of wine from a bargain bin.  Anything more than $20 was a rip-off.”  But her tone bordered on the affectionate, and she compliantly picked up her knife and fork and began to saw through her sandwich. 

“You’ll tell him the truth,” Myka said, as if in between her chiding of Helena to eat her burger and Helena’s tentatively edging her mouth around the end of one of the halves, Helena had agreed to her plan.  “You’ve been coerced into luring him into a trap.  I’ll be there to confirm your story.”

"You’re going to play the corrupt agent, demanding a cut for your so-called assistance?” Helena said disbelievingly.  “If he has a spy at the FBI or Justice, he’ll know just how unlikely that is.” She took a long swallow of her Guinness.  “I’m already light-headed, and I still think your idea is shit.  You won’t be convincing, I’ll be nervous, and Nate will kill us both.”  Growing more strident, she said, “I’m not joking.”

Myka had forgotten how, when Helena was under stress, her eyes, large and unblinking and apprehensive, no longer seemed to cant over her cheekbones, instead leveling over them like a banner headline, YOU’LL RUIN EVERYTHING, WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO CHRISTINA.  But she had thought this through . . . somewhat.  On the drive back, as Helena had rested her head against the side window and worried her thumbnail between her teeth, her usual posture and her usual tic when they had to leave Christina, Myka remembered what Helena had told her years ago about running scams.  “The facts don’t have to make sense so long as the emotions do.  If people believe your emotions are honest, they’ll want to believe whatever you tell them.”  Myka figured she had only one believable story to spin to Burdette about why she was with Helena, but at least with it she would have precious few problems generating emotion.  “He’ll also know my history, in particular my history with you.”

Helena was neither enlightened nor reassured.  “He might find it titillating -- Nate always liked that I liked women -- but since we’re not involved now, I don’t see how it helps us.”

“It helps us if he believes I’m in on the double-cross because I’ll get you back,” Myka said quietly, “because we’ll be the ones jetting off together into the sunset.”

Helena’s laugh sounded suspiciously like a wheeze, and her eyes remained wide, the apprehension turned into shock.  “You’re doing it for love?”

“Obsession would answer better for the fact that we aren’t lovers, that no one’s seen us kissing in the ladies room or making out on the table in the conference room . . . that I’m with Sam.”  She was blushing; she could feel the heat crawling up her face.

For once, Helena didn’t take the moment as an opportunity to mock her, dropping her head and rubbing the back of her neck.  “It might work,” she said to her plate.  Slowly lifting her head, she continued musingly, “The hostility, the unhappiness, that is, if you’re hellbent on making yourself a part of this.  Even the distrust wouldn’t seem out of place.”  She picked up the half of the burger she had started on.  “Don’t make a final decision, not yet.  He’s not going to be in a hurry to contact me, he won’t want to let on how badly he still wants the Bowdoin paintings, if he still wants them.”  Myka recognized that Helena’s glance at her over her burger was meant to underscore the possibility that he wouldn’t want them.  “You have time for second thoughts.”

There seemed nothing more to talk about, although Myka didn’t like the silence that fell between them.  She had set up the dinner, such as it was, as a working dinner, and now that she had made it plain that she would be a part of any future dealings with Burdette and fulfilled the purpose of having the dinner in the first place, it had been reduced to mere eating.  Helena mechanically finished one half of the burger and then concentrated on the kettle chips.  Myka, growingly increasingly frustrated that she was frustrated at the turn the dinner had taken, grumped her way through the rest of her burger and heard herself speaking as soon as she had swallowed the last bite.  “Do you remember when we watched _Double Indemnity_?”  She didn’t want to do this, recall with Helena how things had once been between them.  It was dangerous.  She continued to feel unsettled from remembering her first visit to Helena’s studio -- and knowing that Helena had been remembering it too.  Those memories still had power, and she feared that talking about them would only draw her further into them.  Yet she couldn’t stand the silence.

Helena, who had been tapping her lips with a kettle chip, her gaze focused on the unadorned wall above their booth, let the chip drop to the table.  “Are you asking me because you want the opportunity to tell me that I’m the one who’s a ‘little more rotten?’ Or because you’re warning me that you’re going to shoot me if things take a bad turn with Nate?”

“Nothing like that,” Myka said, feeling awkward.  “The movie just came to mind.”  In her sparsely furnished loft, Helena had allowed for a TV, and they had watched the movie late one night, Helena never having seen it before.  Settling in next to her on the sofa, Helena had sighed that Jemma had never willingly turned on a program that was about fraud, so _Double Indemnity_ , _The Lady Eve_ , _The Sting_ , you name it, she probably hadn’t seen it.  Myka had seen _Double Indemnity_ many times, so mainly she had watched Helena, laughing to herself as Helena had sympathized with Phyllis taking on the “burden” of seducing Neff -- “Couldn’t they have found someone sexier than Fred MacMurray?” -- and then stroking her hair as Helena had fought sleep to stay awake until the movie ended.  It had seemed comical and endearing then, Helena’s grumbling about the burden of seduction, but not so much now.  Myka liked to think she was more Barton Keyes than Walter Neff, but really that had been Pete’s role, not hers.  He had always been more suspicious of Helena, but they were partners, and he had trusted her judgment.

“You were going to let me sleep on the sofa,” Helena said, startling her.  She was drinking the last of her Gunness, and as she looked at Myka over the top of her glass, Myka couldn’t convince herself that the look was hostile or resentful.  “I wasn’t going to have that.”

“You did have a nice bed,” Myka conceded, pretending to misunderstand, “much more comfortable than your sofa.”

“All the nicer with you in it.  I wasn’t going to trade that in for the sofa.”  But Helena didn’t say any more than that, didn’t try to tease her into remembering what had happened when she had finally come to bed, didn’t repeat the lines from the movie they had mangled in murmurs to each other as they had languidly removed the clothing between them, “‘There’s a speed limit in this bed, Helena,” “Yes, love, and I believe I’m driving well below it.  I don’t want to miss any of the scenery.”  It didn’t matter that Helena hadn’t chosen to string out the reminiscence because she was replaying every moment of it, anyway.

The check paid, the other patrons showing no greater interest in their departure than in their arrival, Myka and Helena began walking back to Myka’s apartment building, Helena’s walk a little looser, a little more uncoordinated than usual.  That was why Myka was closer to her, hand hovering between them, ready to put it to her back to steady her, if need be.  Only if there was need.  An inverted cup above them, the sky was pinking around its rim as the sun inexorably descended, and Myka thought she would need to call in, inform the staff monitoring Helena’s movements that Helena was with her and would be getting home past her 8:00 p.m. curfew. 

Couples with strollers and couples with dogs were on the sidewalks; this was a twenty-something’s and early-thirty-something’s neighborhood, and though she was only a few years older than the couple passing them on their left, baby in a stroller and a black Lab on a leash, Myka felt she was too old for where she was living.  She and Sam had bought a condo in the area after their marriage, and it had seemed a right fit at the time; they hadn’t ruled out the idea of children, just postponed it.  After the divorce, she hadn’t wanted to spend the time looking for a brand-new neighborhood, where, among the many detractions, was the fact that she would have to make the effort of learning where everything was, so she had taken one of the few available apartments still available for rent in the area.  If she craned her head a certain way as she looked out her bedroom window, she could see a corner of the building in which she and Sam had bought their condo.  It was familiar, it was safe, and tonight as she walked with the gently swaying Helena, she realized that she was tired of it.

“Did Mr. Martino tell you what happened to some of Charlie’s friends, the ones who listened to him vent about Nate, probably laughed at his jokes about Nate’s habits?”  Helena had put her own hand out, on Myka’s wrist, and Myka stopped.  They were only a block or two from her apartment building, which bordered a stretch that was more gradually being reclaimed from the shabby businesses that continued to inhabit it; the numbers of young couples out with their babies and dogs, consequently, were down.

“A week after Charlie was found in his cell, the guards found one of his friends in the laundry room.   His head was in the washing machine, his body in the dryer.  A few days later, another friend was found in the prison kitchen.  He had been laid on a counter, the knife still in his gut.  A friend who had been smart enough to walk away when Charlie started to complain about Nate was the one who used his phone card to tell me.  He said he was calling to warn me, but I think he was hoping that I might have enough influence to get Nate to stop.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would bother Nate less to kill me than it had to kill Charlie, but as far as I know Nate never went after him.”  In the twilight, in the shadows that were beginning to emerge from between the buildings, Helena’s expression looked especially somber.  “I don’t want you with me when I see Nate, if I see Nate, because I’m plotting to betray the FBI.  I don’t want you with me because I can’t protect you, Myka.  You may think that’s rich coming from me after what I’ve done, but I can’t be with him and talk about the Bowdoin paintings as if I can lead him to them at any time, thinking, no, knowing that if you say the wrong word or look at him in a way that he thinks is off, he’ll kill you.”  Her laugh was shaky.  “Of course he’ll kill me too, but after he kills you.  He’ll want to drag it out with me because I’m yet another Wells who tried to screw him over.” 

Helena’s hand was becoming a claw on her wrist, the nails digging into her skin.  “Like I said, I have faith in you.”  Myka didn’t need to pry Helena’s hand from her arm; Helena let it go, turning to walk ahead of her.

Myka followed her, unsure whether Helena would continue to try to argue her out of the plan.  As they neared the doors to the lobby, Helena said, not looking back at her, “If you’re going to pretend that you still want into my pants, then I ought to have seen the inside of your apartment, don’t you think?”

So much for drawing lines in the sand, Myka reflected, as she and Helena went up in the elevator, to the tenth floor, instead of down to the garage.  With a fatalism that made nerves an irrelevance, Myka ushered Helena into her apartment, indifferent to Helena’s impassive survey of the kitchen, dining area (big enough to comfortably hold a table for four, but no more), and living room with its patio door access to an equally unimpressive balcony view of . . . more buildings.  Helena wandered down the hallway that led from the living room, glancing into the spare bedroom that held a self-assembled desk (although Myka worked mainly in the living room) and daybed and the guest bathroom (the one decorative touch being the matching towels and bath mat), before stepping into the master bedroom.  Myka didn’t follow her, taking a bottle of apple juice from her refrigerator and uncapping it.  Let Helena smirk and sneer as she would.

But on her return to the living room, Helena offered nothing cattier than “You have big feet, but the size 13s in the bedroom are the Neanderthal’s, I assume?”  Myka suppressed a flicker of irritation, not at the remark but at Sam’s forgetting to take his gym shoes with him.  She didn’t mind the few personal items in the bathroom, but the clothing?  It seemed every time that he stayed over he left a tie or belt, something, behind; she knew it wasn’t intentional, but it felt territorial all the same.  It wasn’t much, this apartment, and she certainly hadn’t done much to it, but it wasn’t yet _theirs_ , likely wouldn’t be because if she somehow came out on the other side of this assignment unscathed, she was leaving, she decided.  The FBI, the city, Sam.  The vague discontent and the sporadic consideration she gave to what a new location and a new job might do for her had hardened into resolve.  Grinning a little at herself, she silently amended, not resolve, not quite, but she was getting closer to taking the leap.

Helena had taken a seat on the sofa, crossing her legs and regarding her speculatively, as if something about her and her apartment didn’t match.  “Did you and the Neanderthal live here when you were married?”

Myka shook her head as she drank the apple juice.  “I moved here after the divorce.”  She nodded toward her refrigerator.  “Do you want anything?”

“Just your bathroom before we leave.  I can’t hold my liquor like I used to,” Helena said, directing her mockery at herself.  She glanced at the sofa, the coffee table, the small flat screen, the armchair.  “This doesn’t look any homier than your old place.  Did you buy a few knick knacks and set them out in whatever cave you shared with him?”

Myka shrugged.  “I don’t remember.  I’m not one for decorating.”  She put the empty bottle in a recycling container.  “I’ll call in, so no alarms are raised, but I need to get you back to Mrs. Frederic’s.”  She had dropped her bag just inside the door but stopped mid-stride when she heard Helena’s next question.

“Who wanted the divorce?”

The easy answer was Sam.  He was the one who had broached the subject, who had pursued it until Myka had agreed.  It was certainly the safest answer to give Helena.  “He did,” she said briefly, resuming her path to the door and groping in her bag for the phone.

“Why?”  Helena still had her legs casually crossed, but she seemed to be leaning forward.

“We’re both in law enforcement, Helena.  We never saw each other.”  She had the phone in hand, but Helena was shaking her head.

“You made time for me, you would’ve made time for him.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “Granted, he probably would have eaten more than his share of take-out, but you would have come home.  Late, but not so late that you wouldn’t have had time for a conversation or to watch the news together.  Tell me why.”

What did it matter?  If Helena’s fears were accurate, she was going to fuck things up yet again and get them both killed.  “He said I wasn’t emotionally there, that I wasn’t capable of giving him as much as he wanted.”  She hadn’t tried to argue with him because he had been right.  Their getting married in Reno had been more lark than commitment, and Myka had discovered soon afterward that her new status had worked no miracles; the gratitude and simple affection and relief, yes, relief that someone had saved her from her loneliness, her sense of isolation, hadn’t been transmuted into something stronger.  She counseled herself to be patient, and Sam, too, had appeared to think that time would be the curative that his presence alone wasn’t, until he had decided midway through third year together that he had given her more than enough time, and he was tired of waiting.  Without ever consciously admitting it, she had come to the same conclusion, letting her work days grow longer and spending the better part of their weekends at the office.

“Maybe you have it to give, but he’s not the right one to receive it.”  Helena held a palm out to Myka.  “I’m not going to make this about us.  I remember how you talked about him before we became involved.  You were what he turned to when he didn’t have something more important to do.  Did he change that much once you were married?  Is he different now?”

Several rejoinders jostled for prominence, but Myka said none of them.  Scrolling through her contacts for the oncall IT staff, she said, “You’re not someone I’d take relationship advice from.  Why don’t you go pee while I make my call?” 

She finished the call before Helena came out of the bathroom.  Sure, Sam had a bit of swagger to him, liked to see himself as the hero.  He had enjoyed coming to her rescue after the debacle in Houston, but it didn’t take away from the fact that he spent more nights than he’d had to on her sagging sofa, made her breakfast after what must’ve been sleepless nights on that sofa.  If he had puffed himself up the tiniest bit at her expense, what of it?  It was nothing, nothing, compared to what Helena had taken from her.

Myka didn’t relax the scowl when Helena rejoined her.  “I obviously overstepped.”  And then, with a roguish, unapologetic smile, Helena let her fingers lightly touch Myka’s hair, grazing her cheek as they brushed through the strands.  “You have deserved far better lovers, Myka, than the ones you’ve taken.  Have you ever wondered why you settled for me or for the Neanderthal?”

Myka jerked her head away but she had waited too long.  She had enjoyed the warmth of Helena’s fingers against her skin.  “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve pretty much made up my mind to take a vow of celibacy.”

“I think you’ll find it tiresome.  I know I have.”  Helena stepped away, sweeping her hand toward the door.  “Time to go back to my lonely bed, is it?”

The drive to Mrs. Frederic’s seemed shorter, and maybe it was, driving from her apartment rather than the agency’s office.  It wasn’t a silent drive, as the one from the island had been.  Helena was a few hours removed from having left Christina, and she was marginally closer, at least, to seeing her again than when they had pulled out of the driveway.  Christina was the topic of their conversation, and Helena suggested they try the wading pool again next Sunday, if it were warm enough.  Myka heard herself agreeing as if she actually had a say in what Christina did, and she heard the irony in her laughter if Helena didn’t.  When she came to a stop in front of the fire hydrant -- it was the only open spot -- Helena asked her if she would walk with her to the door, saying “You bought me dinner.  Do the gentlemanly thing.”  She did, not because she was a gentleman but because she recognized that Helena wanted to talk to her outside the car, suspecting in her unrelenting paranoia that it too might be bugged.

Helena waited for her on the walk, tilting her head back to look at the sky.  Myka expected another plea to change her mind about meeting with Burdette.  The intensity with which those dark eyes fixed on her, the stars forgotten, seemed to herald more dire warnings.  “I don’t deserve you.  I didn’t then, and I don’t now, although I’m a better person, I think, than was I then.  But if I thought you were serious about chucking it all,” her voice grew unsteady, “if I thought you were serious, I would claw my father from his grave and ask that son of a bitch where he buried the Bowdoin paintings --”

Myka put her fingertips to Helena’s lips to shush her.  She didn’t second-guess her own gentleness.  Helena laughed softly, sadly against Myka’s hand, moving it up and along her cheek, and Myka let herself cup Helena’s jaw.  “I didn’t think so,” she said after a moment.  She stepped back, bringing her hands up to clutch Myka’s hand before releasing it.  Walking backward, she said, “You really are going to be the death of me, Myka Bering.”

Myka remained on the walk until she saw a light go on in the third floor of the house.  Then she went back to her car and bent herself over the steering wheel until she felt her forehead press against it.

 _Pete flung himself into her cube’s visitor chair.  Myka wondered how exhausted she looked.  Helena was going to be gone for the next few days, an art restoration project for a Charleston museum, and they had spent the night before saying good-bye over and over and over again.  Two months since that first time in her studio, and they hadn’t spent more than a couple of nights apart.  They tried to be professional when they were in the office, but Myka was sure that Pete had figured it out.  There weren’t any rules forbidding her to be involved with a consultant, but she knew it wouldn’t look good, especially given Helena’s family history, so she hadn’t shared the news of their relationship with him._  

_“Foxy Lady conveniently gone on a business trip, huh?”  Pete was brushing donuts crumbs from his shirt onto the carpet.  “Just when Bates was going to press her on going after one of Gentleman Jim’s middlemen.”_

"S _he didn’t make up the trip, Pete,” Myka said, smothering a yawn and reaching for her nearly empty container of coffee.  She’d need to hit up the vending machine again.  Either that, or take the elevator down to the coffee shop on the first floor._

_“Oh, I’m sure,” he said unconvinced._

_“Last week she helped us get the guys behind the credit card scam, remember?”  Among their cases had been an online site thieves had been using to solicit victims’ credit card information.  Passing themselves off as an Internet security firm, they had promised to protect people’s credit card information, monitoring unauthorized activity, for a small fee, smaller, certainly, than what creditable online security firms were requiring.  Instead of monitoring unauthorized activity, the thieves had created it and then called their victims requesting more money to stop it.  Helena had brought in someone whom she had vaguely referred to as a business associate and in an astoundingly short amount of time he had unearthed information that had eluded the FBI’s own tech staff._

_“Yeah, bringing in that dweeby dude with the Macbook.  Joshua . . . Joshua.”  He snapped his fingers until Myka had said with exasperation, “Donovan, his name is Joshua Donovan.”  Pete jerked his head in acknowledgment.  “Donovan,” he repeated, “hell, he was probably part of it.  I’ve never seen our guys gut a web site as fast as he did.  He knew exactly what he was looking for.  Didn’t that strike you as a little strange?.”_

_“Helena said he was good.”_

_“Helena said, Helena said,” he mimicked.  “I know you’re sleeping with her, but, Mykes, you gotta try for some professional distance.”_

_“She’s not her father,” she stubbornly insisted._

_“No, she’s probably worse.”  At Myka’s sour expression, he held his hands up in surrender.  “I get it, you’re in love or lust or something.  For what it’s worth, she seems to be just as ga-ga about you, but I’ve had this feeling about her, and it’s not a good one . . . .”_

_She would remember what she said next for a very long time.  “She wouldn’t hurt me like that.”  It wasn’t what she had meant to say.  She had meant to say something more professional sounding, at the very least more adult sounding, feeling that she had just defended Helena with all the impassioned whininess of a sixteen-year-old._

_“She might not mean to, but she’s too slippery, too shifty, too something.  I can’t explain it, but I can feel it.  Don’t give her your heart on a platter just yet, okay?”_

His warning had come too late, of course.  If Pete knew that she was planning to directly interact with Nate, he would do more than warn her.  He had the power now to reassign her, and he probably would.  Putting herself in Burdette’s sights wasn’t part of the deal.  Helena was to lay the groundwork for the con, and then the agents on the organized crime team would be the ones to sweep in and arrest Burdette.  But she didn’t care how risky, how stupid risky, she was being by inserting herself into the con.  She couldn’t let Helena betray her again.

Pete wouldn’t be surprised by her plan.  He knew how much she dreaded being burned again, by the same woman again.  But he would be even less surprised that a part of her wanted to do nothing more than chuck it all and jet off with Helena and Christina and Jemma into the sunset.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it's taken so long, but my fic writing has gotten out of control, so it's taking me longer to post chapters for each fic. Think of this more as the first part of a much longer chapter that, in some ways, resets the relationship or more firmly sets it on course or whatever metaphor you want to use. I hope to be back with Part 2 of Chapter 10 by the end of March.

Myka hadn't planned on Helena attending the charity 10K run with her. When she had first mentioned the idea to Pete, she had been envisioning that she would somehow inveigle herself into a group of Barrington Academy alumni, whether they were bunched at the start line and led all the way or fell to the back of the pack a kilometer or two in. She would use the same story that she and Helena had used at the academy, that she and her wife were looking at schools for their daughter, in large part because she hoped that Bryce DeWitt would be there as well. She had no alternative plan, no other, better story, in the event that DeWitt wouldn't be attending, and no plan for how she wanted to approach DeWitt if he were there. Ordinarily she was scrupulous about thinking things out several steps ahead, but this seemed a situation that might yield more positive results if she let things evolve, a course of action that normally was foreign to her. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling, something perilously close to one of Pete's hunches, that going to the event without plans and fallback plans was the best plan.

So when Helena let drop the information that she had become Facebook friends with the wives of some of DeWitt's old teammates, Myka had been surprised by the strength of her dismay when Pete suggested (or, more accurately, jumped on the implicit suggestion that Helena had left dangling) that she should go as well. It would cost the agency another outrageous entry fee, but two attending meant triple their chances, in Pete's math, of leaving the event with something that might implicate DeWitt or one of his friends in the fraud.

"You have ears," he said, pointing at Myka and then swiveling his chair to point at Helena, "you have ears, and, together, you have, like, multiple ears all at once. Three opportunities."

They were sitting at the conference table in Pete's office. He and Helena were snacking on pistachios; Myka was on her sixth cup of coffee for the day. She didn't read anything into their mutual eating of the pistachios, which Helena was bringing with her to the office on a regular basis, that or almonds or cashews. Pete loved to snack; he would share anything edible that anyone might bring in with him. It could be Bernie Madoff with sunflower seeds or Nate Burdette with potato chips or a terrorist with candy corn. Helena's motives had been murkier until she explained with a sly smile at Myka that Charlotte, Alex McCrossan's wife - and Alex and Bryce were like this, Helena had said, crossing her fingers - was recommending nuts as a power snack, full of good fats and protein. You just exercised a little harder to burn off the extra calories.

When Myka only stared at her, Helena said, "Did I not say that I was going to make use of social media in this investigation? Hoping they might reveal something interesting in a public space wasn't going to go very far. I had to make myself their friend. I did as DeWitt suggested and humbly inquired about Barrington and what they or their husbands had most loved about it. Our friendships blossomed from there." As Myka rolled her eyes, Helena added impishly, "Allison's been quite forthcoming about what she's done to, ah, stoke the fire in her marriage. I've let on that we've had some problems in that area."

Pete dribbled a pistachio from his lips while Myka groaned and hid her face in her hands. "Helena, Jesus, what if one of them decided, while you were chatting or IMing or whatever, to run some Google searches on you?"

"Since no one's unfriended me or," Helena softly cleared her throat, "suggested that we shouldn't 'wun' together at the race, I don't think you have much to worry about." Impatiently, she explained, "'Wun' is a combination of 'walk' and 'run.' It's not my term, it's theirs." As Myka finally lifted her head from her hands, she thought the expression on Helena's face mirrored the severity of her least favorite teacher or maybe it was the sneering of the kid from her junior high who liked to snap the back strap of her bra. In either case, the expression reminded Myka of why she had never truly enjoyed school until she went to college. She sensed there was an unpleasant or, at the very least, irritating "learning moment" in her immediate future. "Remember what I said about selling emotion, not fact." Helena was even wagging her finger. "Convince people that you feel the same about what they hold most dear."

"And what was that?" Pete demanded derisively. "Money and more money?"

Helena narrowed her eyes at him. "You couldn't con people into giving you the lint from their pockets." Sighing, she said, "Who doesn't want to believe that she's relatable? That, fundamentally, she's not all that different from anyone else, just richer. These women love their husbands and their children, most of them do, anyway, so I played the same card. I had Claudia help me to set up an online profile that would underscore the two most important things in my life, my daughter and my wife." She trained her eyes on Myka, the severity and sneering gone - if they had existed outside Myka's mind in the first place - replaced by a vulnerability so naked that Myka wanted to look away. Refusing to give her that out, Helena said, "It wasn't much of a stretch, Myka." Then the vulnerability was gone, too, and she was shrugging, saying lightly, "Most of the pictures are of Christina, of course. But I still had one or two of us, from happier times, that Claudia was able to work her magic on. Some," she shot another withering look at Pete, "might have thought there would be a few wives who would have disapproved of my having a wife, but that's in such bad taste nowadays."

Pete sent her a grimace in turn before sidling an uneasy glance at Myka. She refused to meet his eyes. Popping another pistachio into his mouth, he asked Helena, "How would you have saved face with all those friends of yours if we weren't paying that pricey entrance fee for you? You don't expect me to believe that you have that kind of cash lying around your house, do you? Plus there's the little matter of the race's location being outside the range of your monitor."

"I would have managed, I generally do." Helena's hand searched the bag for more pistachios. "The opportunity this event presents is too good to pass up. One or more of these women know what's going on. I just have to find the right key." She smiled sweetly at Myka. "Shall I expect you at my apartment bright and early on Saturday morning? I even purchased appropriately expensive running clothes. On my stipend," she emphasized for Pete's benefit. "I'll be surviving on oatmeal and Ramen noodles for the next several weeks."

Myka only played with her empty coffee cup in response, but Helena was still smiling as she resealed her plastic snack bag of pistachios. Pete slanted them a longing look before tipping back his chair and appearing to count the panels in the ceiling. "So what did the Real Wives of Barrington have to say when you asked them about bringing sexy back? Just curious, they seem the type to delegate sex with their husbands to their nannies."

"Funny you should mention that since one of them advised me to take a lover and let my wife amuse herself with our investments. The others thought Laura was joking, but I'm not so sure. She's the one whose husband seems to be closest to DeWitt, and she's posted many," Helena theatrically paused, "many pictures of the three of them." At that, Myka stopped playing with her coffee cup. "And you were thinking it was all idle chatter," Helena said reprovingly. She leaned forward, resting her chin on interlaced fingers, eyes bright with malice as she looked at Pete. "But just in case Mrs. Trained Monkey is looking for a little more from you in the romance department, make time for her, let her know you appreciate her. That's what Allison says works for her, although in your wife's case, I suspect that absence is what makes her heart grow fonder."

Letting his chair spring upright, Pete flashed her a sour smile. "Time to fly away on your broomstick."

Helena laughed and, rising from the table, tossed him the bag of pistachios. "I hear there's another Lattimer on the way. You must be so proud and your wife so . . . resigned."

Pete waited for several beats once she had left the office to ask Myka, "How much is she messing with your head?"

"No more than usual." Myka started playing with her coffee cup again, uncurling the lip and thumbing the paper up. She considered telling Pete about her intention to become part of Helena's plan to ensnare Burdette, the lovelorn agent willing to betray the FBI. But Pete would likely think it was foolhardy and less a testament to her suspiciousness about what Helena might actually be up to than a desire, at best unrecognized, at worst denied, to protect her.

He waited for her to say something else, but she merely tore pieces from the shredded paper of the cup. A small pile had accumulated on the table before he said, "I guess I'll get the sign-off on the registration fees. Talk to Parker about taking her monitor off so she can go with you to the event without looking like a felon. That is, if you feel you can trust her for a couple of hours." He opened the bag of remaining pistachios. "If we're getting no traction on Burdette, we can shake a tree to see if DeWitt falls out of it." He jiggled a handful of nuts and then crammed them into his mouth, using the heel of his palm to hold them in as he chewed. Myka had seen far worse displays when Pete was eating. She swept the pieces of paper into the cup and tossed it into the wastebasket as she left the room.

Early on Saturday morning, the sun was out, although its light was already milky-looking, as if it were being filtered. The forecast called for rain, but later in the day, after the 10K was over. Myka paused, looking up at the sun; thin clouds were already beginning to trail across it. Last Sunday she had stood on this walk, and Helena had suggested that they find the Bowdoin works and then take Christina and Jemma and run far, far away. She had thought about it more than she should have and spent an evening at the office, not going home until midnight, rereading the files they had on the Wellses, all three of them. Interesting what could leap out at you after a third or fourth go-around.

Though she had pressed Helena's doorbell, it was Mrs. Frederic who opened the door. She was wearing an apron that had "Grandma's Kitchen" printed on it in large, old-fashioned letters, the ones that had curlicues linking them together like ivy. The apron was dusted with flour and streaks of batter, but the linen blouse and slacks were without spots or smears and the complicated weave of her hair, designed to defy humidity rather than accommodate it, hadn't relinquished a single strand. "You're just in time for the first batch of cookies from the oven, Agent Bering."

So said the spider to the fly, but Myka's stomach growled loudly as she entered the foyer and smelled chocolate. "Helena's with me in the kitchen," Mrs. Frederic explained, leading Myka back to the back of the house. Myka was able to do no more than glance into the rooms as they passed them, one the dining room she had seen before and another that held an old-fashioned banker's desk and bookcases. The computer monitor faced away from her, and she wondered what files might be stored on the CPU; doubtless they would make for some interesting reading. Too bad she didn't have cause for a warrant. As they approached the kitchen, Myka heard Helena's and a child's voices commingling. For a moment, she had the confused impression that one of Mrs. Frederic's grandchildren was visiting, and then Helena said clearly, unmistakably, "Don't touch the cookie sheet, pumpkin. It's hot."

Myka squeezed her eyes shut. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to ruin the surprise," Mrs. Frederic said, inclining her head slightly so she could look at Myka. The impassiveness of her expression was broken only by the smile touching the corners of her mouth.

Entering the kitchen, Myka noticed only that it was larger and more modern than she had expected before Christina, yelling "Myka," was sliding down the chair she had been sitting on and ran toward her, holding up her arms to be lifted. Myka picked her up, kissing her cheek, which tasted of chocolate, and glared over her ear at Helena. Helena, who remained seated at the large center island, was finishing the last bite of a cookie. She held up a finger for Myka to wait, swallowed, and said, as no apology at all, "I suppose I should have told you." She leaned across the island to take another cookie from the cookie sheet. "The blessed event occurred earlier this week, and the Winslow family finally has a son and heir. Ben has suspended Christina's visits until he and his wife and the baby are more settled." She broke the cookie into two. "The loving father," she said dryly, biting a half into quarters and giving Mrs. Frederic an "Mmmm" and an appreciative glance. "I thought it might be a good idea if we took Christina with us to the 10K."

"A good idea?" Myka repeated, her tone sharp. Christina was oblivious to her displeasure, pushing at Myka's shoulder as a sign that she wanted down. Myka lowered her to the floor, letting Christina tug her to the island as Mrs. Frederic swept around them, low heels, her apparent concession to kitchen safety, clicking on the tile as she bent to open the oven door. Stone tile, expensive-looking stone tile, and the oven was professional caliber. How did a retired community organizer and project manager afford a kitchen like this? But Myka stopped trying to square retirement benefits with a kitchen renovation that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars as Helena deposited a handful of cookies on a plate in front of her.

"Eat them. I could hear your stomach growling from across the room." She went to the refrigerator, and Myka, noticing how small Helena's waist was, set off by the skin-hugging lycra of her running tank and capris, remembered how spannable she had found it, attempting to encompass it between her hands; her fingers had never met but there hadn't been much space between them. Seeking refuge from memories, she inspected the cookies on the plate.

"If you'd prefer oatmeal raisin, those should be ready in a few minutes," Mrs. Frederic offered, her smile directed more at Christina, who had crawled up into her mother's chair to launch a raid on the remaining cookies on the cookie sheet.

Without turning her head, which was craned around one of the refrigerator doors, Helena said reprovingly, "Christina Rosalind Wells, put those cookies back. You've already had your share and more."

Christina almost dropped the cookies in surprise before she broke into giggles. With a mischievous look at Myka, she returned three cookies to the sheet, continuing to hold one and hiding it behind her back. Moving from the refrigerator to a cabinet, a half-gallon of milk dangling from her fingers, Helena took a glass from the shelf. "Put back the one you're hiding, too." Helena poured milk into the glass and gave it to Myka as she sternly watched her daughter drop the cookie onto the sheet.

"Rosalind," Myka murmured, breaking off a chunk of one of the cookies.

"Why not Rosalind? It's a lovely name." Helena had already turned away, intent on returning the milk to the refrigerator.

_It was one of the games Pete loved to play with anyone new to the office, "Guess Myka's Middle Name," or as he called it when he and Myka were alone, "Guess Myka's Crazy-Ass Middle Name," because to call it that in front of a newbie was to give away too much since her middle name was crazy-ass. Pete always gave everyone five tries, but no one had ever guessed it. Helena had been no more successful, but Pete had given her only three tries. "She swans around here, thinking she's so smart," he had explained later, "so let her prove it." In the three weeks since Helena had become the team's consultant, Pete had gone from pretty much naked ogling to a wariness that didn't prevent him from letting his gaze linger on her ass but reduced the frequency with which he did it. When Myka had asked him what it was about Helena that bothered him, besides the obvious - her arrogance, her smugness, her arriving late (the last didn't really bother Pete but Myka had included it because it bothered her) - Pete had irritably rolled his shoulders and said, "I don't know. I just feel that she needs to be watched." At Myka's snicker, he had said, "Not like that. Okay, yes, like that too, but more the 'I think you're hot but I don't trust you' kind of watching."_

_Myka was never invested in the game. She took no pride at all in her middle name, not even the perverse pride that it was so off-the-wall no one could guess it, but she was disappointed that Helena had put so little effort into her guessing._

" _Mmmm . . . Oliphant," she had said distractedly, more absorbed in the case file she was reviewing._

_Pete had pressed her for a second guess. "O'Leary," she said finally, exhaling loudly in annoyance. She looked Myka up and down. "Fair skin, hair with a bit of red to it, I imagine there's some Celt in her."_

_Third and last chance, he had announced, rubbing his hands. Helena had stared at him, the way, Myka noticed, that she stared at poorly executed counterfeits, as though they were an affront to her. "Ocho," she said flatly. "Her parents were going through an 'All Things Spanish' craze, or perhaps she was conceived on a trip to Mexico." She slapped the cover of the file folder shut. "I'm going down to the coffee shop for some tea. Does anyone want anything?" She had walked out of her cubicle, leaving them to look at each other._

" _Just for that, I'm not going to tell you what it is," Pete had said to her retreating back, thrusting out his chin._

_Later that day, Helena stopped at her desk. "Ophelia," she said, without smirking, without the impatience she would show when others hadn't arrived at the answer as quickly as she had. In fact, she said it as casually as she might have said, "Let's go over that digital piracy case again." When Myka gaped at her, and it was a completely dropped jaw that Myka presented her with, Helena said, "I cozened it out of someone in HR. I said I was in Accounting and that I couldn't process a travel reimbursement for you without having your full name." As Myka scowled at her, Helena said, "You may call it cheating, but I call it getting what you want as quickly and painlessly as possible."_

_Helena was wearing one of her subtly mismatched outfits, a striped gray suit jacket with striped gray pants. The grays were the same shade, but the stripes were different, thinner and more narrowly spaced on the pants. She dug the heel of one of her slingbacks into the carpet and spun toward the cubicle's opening._

" _Rosalind," Myka blurted. Helena turned around, equally surprised. "If my father had to name me after a woman in Shakespeare, why not Portia or Miranda or Rosalind? Rosalind had some pluck, some daring. Ophelia," she finished sadly, "he names me after one of the most pitiful figures . . . ."_

_Helena chuckled. "I was named for some rotter in a distant branch of the Wells family. She left England for America in the nineteenth century and ended up on trial for murder." She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, suddenly ill-at-ease. "We have to hope we don't live up to our namesakes, don't we, Myka Rosalind Bering?"_

Myka tried the chunk of the cookie she had broken off. In addition to the chocolate, there was a sweet crunch, toffee. Irene Frederic might have a torture room in her basement and someone currently in it, but she made good cookies. Helena had reclaimed her chair at the island, holding only a slightly squirming Christina on her lap. Three pairs of brown eyes were watching her as she ate her cookies and drank her milk - she wasn't much of a milk drinker but she had always liked a glass of it with cookies, damn Helena for remembering - one set cool and vaguely predatory, one set warmer but a little too avidly staring at the remaining cookies on her plate, and one set focused on her milk-moistened lips as if the mouth and tongue below those eyes were reading to suck all the sweetness from them. Choking, Myka put the last cookie down and coughed into a napkin that Helena thoughtfully offered, eyes wide with concern . . . and perhaps a little mockery.

Voice more wheeze than voice, Myka said, "Having Christina here is in violation of your agreement with her father. Why do you want to compound it by taking her with us? Are you that eager to take on the Winslow family?"

Helena reflexively clutched Christina tighter to her. "As far as they know, she's coloring in her books and eating waffles with her nonni, unless you plan to tell them something else." The eyes had turned hard, and if Helena's mouth and tongue were to launch an offensive on hers now, Myka figured she would be spitting out blood and pieces of her cheeks. Christina began to squirm in earnest, saying, "Daddy told me I had to be a big girl 'cause there was a new baby." Helena let her jump down, and Christina, chirruping "I'm a big girl," ran over to Mrs. Frederic, who was dropping spoonfuls of cookie batter on another cookie sheet. One just taken from the oven rested on the stove top. "Besides I,  _we_  need to take Christina with us. My new friends are expecting to see her there. It's a family fun event, and your  _family_ needs to be seen with you."

"She's four, Helena. What happens when she tells one your 'friends' that I'm not her mother or that you don't live with her?" Myka felt that her glare was undercut by her practically stuffing the last of Mrs. Frederic's chocolate chip and toffee cookies into her mouth.

"She's four, Myka," Helena repeated derisively. "Will they believe her when she says she lives in a room full of princesses or that she keeps tigers and polar bears as pets?" Gathering plates and dirty glasses and carrying them over to the sink, she said, "I'm more concerned about what you'll tell them or fail to carry off. We might be experiencing a few problems in our marriage right now, but we're committed to each other. Can you convince them that I'm the one who, despite our issues, you want to be with?" Helena had turned around and was leaning against the countertop, arms crossed over her chest.

The running tank was truly skin-tight, and how Helena had crossed her arms gave her breasts an extra, and unnecessary, lift. It probably wasn't by accident, Myka reminded herself as her eyes began to drop past Helena's jawline, Helena had always viewed her undeniable good looks as simply another tool to be used. She might not be planning to do more than walk with Christina and even then only as far as Christina's much shorter legs would take them before she grew tired or bored or both, but Helena looked more toned than nights spent confined to her apartment would explain, and the crossed arms, though barely flexed, showed the curve of muscle. Whether she could be convincing as Helena's wife, Myka wasn't sure, but she ruefully acknowledged that she would find it no hardship to put her hands on Helena's body.

A few minutes later when she was kneeling to remove Helena's ankle monitor and her face was in close proximity to Helena's thigh, Myka blamed Pete all the more loudly in her mind. Her plan had had the virtue of simplicity; she would show up, mingle, and through some casually initiated conversations with Barrington Academy alumni try to identify any with a special connection to DeWitt or each other. She might not get a lot, but she wasn't risking a lot either. Investigations were built on the accretion of evidence, and as accretion implied, the process of collecting it was often time-consuming and arduous. Instead, she and Helena and, now, Christina were going to stroll in as the happy family, the tension and resentment and, on Helena's part, desperation that were the mortar holding the two of them together transmuted, somehow, into something no more scarring than spousal bickering, while Christina . . . . No matter how cute she was, she was a risk. It wouldn't take too many ill-advised remarks and hasty corrections of the same before the Barrington wives started to doubt Helena's hastily constructed version of reality. And if one of them became suspicious enough to tell her husband or DeWitt himself that the couple who had been checking out Barrington for their daughter weren't what they seemed to be, the investigation could come to a rapid and dissatisfying end.

She must have sighed because Helena said, "I know there are risks, but sometimes you have to play big to win big. This can work, if you follow my lead. Will you do that, Myka?"

The monitor unlatched, and Myka, without answering, took it off her leg. Helena rubbed at the skin that the monitor had covered. "It's not paler than the rest of you," Myka said curtly, and Helena frowned. Myka put the monitor on the end table next to her. They had decided to remove the monitor in the living room since Christina's eagerness to assist had been more hindrance than help, and Mrs. Frederic had enticed her to stay in the kitchen with freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies. Most of the time Myka had seen the living room only when it was shrouded in darkness, Mrs. Frederic off hatching schemes or torturing victims elsewhere, but in the hazy, filtered sunlight of a Saturday morning, it looked like the living room of a woman who took pride in her family, based on the number of pictures hung on the walls and crowding surfaces, and occupied much of her free time with books. They were more numerous than the pictures of her sons and grandchildren. Many of them appeared to be nonfiction works by their titles, histories for the most part. If she was planning to take over the world, she would want to learn from the mistakes of those who preceded her.

Helena was wiggling and flexing her leg, a very expensive running shoe coming uncomfortably to catching Myka in the jaw. She murmured an insincere apology, then moved away from the end table, walking around the room like a patient unsure whether her legs would support her. Myka bit the inside of her lip in impatience. It had been a lightweight plastic monitor, not a shackle attached to a chain. Grinning, sensing that she was testing the limits of Myka's patience, Helena said, "Let me run upstairs and grab the bag Jemma left when she dropped off Christina, and then we can go." The grin turned mocking. "Unless you think you need to accompany me for fear I'll shimmy down a drainpipe."

"Depends on what's in the bag." Myka drifted toward one of the bookcases.

"Sunscreen, bottles of water, wet wipes, and extra pairs of shorts, socks, and underwear for Christina." Myka froze, a book partly worked out from the shelf. "Timing her trips to the potty is not something she's completely mastered." Helena laughed, and it sounded light and affectionate and very much like it would have sounded nine years ago had she been equally amused by her look of horror, Myka realized, and she was as compelled to smile in response now as she had been then. They both were quiet for a moment before Helena rapidly crossed the room and started charging up the stairs. She shouted toward the kitchen, "Christina, we're getting ready to go." More offhandedly she called to Myka, "Can you check on her and make sure she's not covered in cookie dough?"

She felt as she sometimes did on the Sunday afternoons she spent with Helena and Christina that a life different, but not so markedly different, from her own was on the other side of a wall so tissue-thin she could put her hand through it. It was a life in which she and Helena and Christina were a family, and she was as responsible as Helena for ensuring that a four-year-old wasn't bringing the world to an end in another room. Walking to the kitchen as carefully as Helena had circuited the living room, lightheaded at the thought that those two realities might be merging, Myka entered the kitchen. The world wasn't about to come to an end; Christina was once more on a chair at the island, eating cookies. She smiled, unrepentant, her lips opening wide over a gummy mass of baked batter and half-chewed raisins.

"Swallow that and then we'll wash your hands and make sure you've gone to . . ." she felt ridiculous saying it but said it anyway, "gone to the potty." Christina industriously swallowed and monkeyed down the chair, holding up her hands for Myka's inspection.

"No, they're not clean." She turned to Mrs. Frederic, who was sitting at a table in the dining nook at the end of the kitchen. Windows and a set of double doors looked out onto a yard hardly bigger than a welcome mat. She was drinking coffee as she read a newspaper spread out on the table, but Myka was confident that Mrs. Frederic had missed nothing of her awkward attempt to play the parent to Christina. "Where's a bathroom I can take her to?"

She hadn't sounded particularly pleasant as she asked it, but Mrs. Frederic was unruffled by the abruptness, genially directing them across the hall. Just as genially she said, as Myka was urging Christina toward the hallway, "You should relax, Agent Bering. There's no need to be on guard against the child."

Looking down at Christina whose hand had instinctively searched for her own, her hair, dark and lustrous like her mother's, but having the flypaper-like capacity of a four-year-old's for spontaneously generating tangles and trapping food, in this case, cookie crumbs, Myka thought, I have every need to be on guard against her. Her second thought was, as Christina peered up at her, eyes as black as her mother's but as trusting as Helena's were mocking or hostile, I have no defense against her. It wasn't so terrifying an admission.

When Helena swept into the kitchen ten minutes later, Christina was waiting for her, hands washed, hair combed, and, Myka hoped, bladder sufficiently emptied. Mrs. Frederic had packed snacks, cookies and juice boxes for everyone, she had announced, her gaze falling on Myka and her lips twisting slightly. Christina was holding the soft-sided lunch box in which Mrs. Frederic had stored them and showed it off to her mother. Helena showed off her larger bag, which Christina found comical in the way only small children could find the ordinary uproarious, and as she giggled, Myka stared at the obnoxiously large diamond wedding ring Helena was sporting on her left ring finger. Helena said, "The only thing of value Jim Wells gave my mother, unless you count me, and I doubt you feel that's the case." She stretched her arm out and admired the ring. "I had it sized for me for several years ago, and it's come in handy a number of times. I remember when I was a child and Jemma used to pawn it to keep the creditors away. Precious, precious memories," she finished wryly. "But one of us needs to be wearing a ring and, more importantly, one that fits her. I don't suppose you still have the Neanderthal's ring."

Myka had lost it, a plain platinum wedding band, ten months into her marriage, but she hadn't had it replaced. She told Sam she had never been one to wear rings, or much jewelry of any kind, and he hadn't seemed disappointed at her lack of interest in a replacement ring. He had continued to wear his, even after they had decided to divorce. "It would have looked out of place next to that rock, anyway." She took the bag from Helena and slipped it over her shoulder. "Let's get going." Pointing toward the front of the house, she said, "Car's out there," and placed a guiding hand on Christina's shoulder.

"We're not taking that medium-priced gray four-door of yours and parking it in a sea of Benzes and BMWs." Helena hadn't moved and she had crossed her arms over her chest, but there was no surreptitious lifting this time; her forearms were pressing her breasts flat. "You can make jokes about being born with a stainless steel spoon, like you did when we were at the school, but we need to show the women I'll be with - and their husbands - that we belong in their world." Both her smile and her tone became brittle, and she had never looked more like her father. "It still comes down to what tribe you belong in, Myka, and if you don't look like you belong, if you don't act like you belong, you don't belong." She gestured toward the bag Myka was carrying. "In one of the outside pockets, you'll find the keys to Irene's BMW. She's graciously allowed us to borrow it for the day."

Somewhere between getting Christina's car seat into the BMW, which was a much smoother process than getting it into her own sedan, and then getting Christina into it, which was a more protracted process, Myka downed a few ibuprofen with a bottle of water to take care of an incipient headache. She hadn't had one before she arrived at the brownstone. The pain medication kept it to a dull throb as they drove to the public park, close to the academy, that was hosting the event. She was already sweating, and the race hadn't started. She tried to distract herself by puzzling out how Irene Frederic had the funds to remodel her kitchen and own a late-model luxury car. Her husband had been an attorney, but he had represented the type of community organizations that had employed her, not a lucrative source for billable hours. Even if he had managed to create a solid nest egg for her, he had been dead for many years, and if she had been living off that egg all this time, she wouldn't have had the money to sink into . . . this, and Myka was helpless not to let a pleasurable hiss escape her as she sank deeper into the leather seat and felt the cool air of the virtually silent AC pour over her.

Christina was singing quietly to herself, occasionally interrupting her songs about dolls to ask if they were any closer to the park, and Helena, after patiently answering each time, "We'll let you know when we're close, pumpkin," went back to reading her phone, eyes narrowing in concentration. Although Myka hadn't asked what she was doing, Helena volunteered, "I'm rereading all the notes I took on them. You don't have to know everything about them, but we have to act as though I did pass on the interesting tidbits to you."

When they encountered an unexpected slow-down on the interstate, which had Myka anxiously checking the car's clock, Helena began feeding her the tidbits. Charlotte appeared to be the leader of the group, and she made much of the fact that, at one time during the '80s, her father was the ambassador to Uruguay. "She likes to trot out her Spanish," Helena said. "Maybe I'll throw her some of the stock phrases I learned in high school and she can correct me," Myka said. "Even better," Helena replied. Allison seemed the most sociable, if the pictures posted to her Facebook and Instagram accounts were anything to go by. "Lots and lots of parties," Helena said, glancing at Myka from the corner of her eye. "You probably won't have to say anything at all." Meredith was the only one of the friends who had attended Barrington. "She doesn't post as much as the others, and she hasn't reached out to me individually. She's also the only one who works full-time. I believe she's some kind of quant for an investment firm. However," and at this point in her summary, Helena's tone became arch, "she brags quite a bit online about her amazing recall of trivia. You might want to test her." She paused, becoming more serious. "And that leaves us with Laura. If DeWitt is screwing anyone's wife, she's it. She's gorgeous, and it's not hard to read between the lines of posts and understand that she's disenchanted with her husband. And as I said before, there are many pictures of her, her husband, and DeWitt, and her loving gaze isn't on her husband."

"And what do I talk to her about?" Myka began checking the exit signs. They would take the same turn-off as if they were going to Barrington, but they would take a different set of side streets to get to the park.

"You don't. You let her see you talking to DeWitt."

Myka was positive that if she had lowered the BMW's windows, Christina would have done her best to hang her head out of the one closest to her, sniffing the air much like a dog would. It was enticingly green here, broad swaths of well-tended lawns and flower beds, and these were just the medians and the green spaces between the occasional sidewalk and the curb. The homes were much farther back, hidden behind protective screens of trees and shrubbery as well as security gates. Picture postcard-loveliness bankrolled by millions of dollars; there was probably more income concentrated here than in many small countries. The headache that the ibuprofen had kept to an ignorable throb was beginning to intensify, and Myka, no less sweaty for having driven an expensive car not her own to Connecticut, was growing irritable. This was high school all over again, except the golden ones were hidden from view in their walled enclaves. Not all of them, there would be plenty at the park, and her thoughts went back briefly to the conference room in the Marston Oil building and the Marstons with their golden hair and their golden, sarcastic laughter.

"Myka, you're going to overshoot the park entrance. You need to make the turn now," Helena's voice, surprised and faintly annoyed, brought her back to the present. Reflexively Myka turned the steering wheel to the right and though she didn't know exactly how she looked at Helena as she did it, Helena slowly sucked in a breath between her teeth and said with measured patience, "You can't look at me like that in front of them. Being pissed off with me is okay, wanting to eviscerate me is not."

The park's parking lot, not generously sized to begin with, was already full or nearly full, and Myka glided the BMW down the rows, finding a space at the very end of the lot. A dumpster was set close to the line, and Myka didn't realize she was holding her breath until she had successfully squeezed the car in between the dumpster and a neighboring Porsche and let it out in a relieved sigh. After collecting Christina and their bags, she and Helena, Christina between them, crossed the lot toward a crowd gathering around a few picnic tables placed end to end. Beyond the picnic tables were flags and banners and a few runners dramatically going through a series of stretches. Myka narrowed her eyes at them; it wasn't a marathon. From what she could see, the 10K's course was a walk/run path that appeared to follow the borders of the park, which would make this a relatively large park. Swing sets and play areas dotted the grass beyond the path, and the picnic tables that were in front of them must have been taken from another area of the park; there were no grills, no fire pits, no picnic shelters nearby. Myka looked down at her well-worn running shoes; that was real grass beneath them, not a patch of crabgrass or dandelions to be seen.

"C'mon love," Helena said, motioning her to one of the picnic tables. "You need to get your number."

Myka brushed around a family who had halted in front of her to put on their bib numbers. Christina already had a bib number affixed to her chest, and she was busily peeling off emoji stickers and placing them haphazardly on the paper. A woman sitting at the picnic table held out a pen to her, and she automatically signed her name on the line. The woman handed her a bib and pushed another sheet toward her. "If you would like more information about the foundations the money you've donated will be going to or would like to receive information about upcoming charity or volunteer events, please write down your e-mail address." As Myka looked at her, she saw the same amber-colored eyes she had seen across the conference table from her at Marston Oil. She wrote down an e-mail address she had discontinued using years ago, smiling brightly, wickedly at the woman. She wasn't Hilary Marston whoever she was, but it didn't matter. She was of their breed.

Joining Helena and Christina who had wandered to a less congested area, Myka put on her bib number. Helena was shading her eyes, although the hazy sunlight was becoming hazier as clouds thickened across the sky. "It's almost impossible to make out anyone, same hair, same running clothes," she muttered. Then she lifted her hand above her head and began to wave it. "Ah, I think that's Charlotte over there. Her Facebook photos are just a little flattering," she said snidely, as she took Christina's hand and began to walk toward a group of women attended by children of varying ages claiming a play area. Myka shrugged on their bags and fell in behind Helena and Christina, trying to her work her expression from grim to neutral. She wasn't sure she could manage friendly just yet.

Cries of "Hello" and "Great to finally meet you" welcomed them as they neared the group. One of the women left her friends to walk toward them, saying to Christina, "And you are just as cute as can be, Christina," and Christina giggled and ran, not to Helena, but back to Myka and clutched her legs. Helena threw a triumphant glance over her shoulder at Myka, as if to say, "Don't worry about Christina, she's a Wells," before air-hugging the woman and exclaiming in the same too-loud voice, "Of course, you're Allison." Hooking her arm around Helena's, Allison led her toward two other women, "Charlotte and Meredith," and then Myka and Christina were swallowed in a rush of introductions, names coming out and fingers pointing at children with such speed that Myka was never clear on whether Grey was Charlotte's son or Meredith's and whether Ella, Meredith's daughter, had jumped ahead two grades or one. She had managed to glue a friendly enough smile on her face that when Charlotte said, "Helena told us you were an attorney, but she didn't say what firm you worked for," it had hardly slipped before Myka thought quickly enough to say, "Actually I went solo a few years ago. I have a few clients, whose estate and investment planning I manage. I wanted more time to spend with Christina." As if she had been cued at that very moment, Christina ran from the slide to shout at her, "Myka, come swing me!" And Myka said, with an indulgent smile that she feared might show more relief than indulgence, "That's exactly why I rethought my career. If you'll excuse me, I have a daughter to spoil."

She watched Helena interact with the women as she propelled the swing in which Christina kicked her legs and yelled, "Faster, faster." Nothing in her expression betrayed any disinterest or desire to be distracted; she was completely absorbed in whatever conversation she happened to be having. At times she would look for the two of them and wave, her ever-present smile only widening, before she dipped her head down again, being utterly convincing in her performance that she hadn't wanted to spend her Saturday any other way than with some over-privileged families she couldn't even fleece. Myka was so absorbed by Helena's role-playing that she missed the arrival of the women's husbands and DeWitt, who was trailing the others, a very pretty blonde clinging to his arm, but Helena's head shot up and her smile began to develop a feral curl as DeWitt removed the blonde's hand from his arm, his gaze zeroing in on the swings.

Myka slowed the swing. "Why don't you run over and see your mother? I bet she misses you." Christina hopped out without a look backward and began running toward Helena, her bib number flying off her chest and landing in the grass. DeWitt bent to pick it up and hand it to her, and Christina snatched it from him with a little shriek before she resumed her gallop toward her mother.

It was her wariness and reserve, Helena had surmised, which had attracted DeWitt's interest the day they had met with him and Mrs. Carmichael at Barrington, and Myka didn't find it difficult to begin drawing away from him as DeWitt came closer. A predator confident in his abilities, Helena had said later that day, always likes a bit of a chase. He stopped at the swing next to hers, taking its chain between his fingers.

"It's an unexpected delight to see you and Ms. Wells here today." He grinned at her, his teeth as painfully white as they were when they had met him, but the hair was blonder. New highlights? He was holding out his hand, and Myka reached over to limply shake it. She would have preferred to squeeze it as hard as she could, but she was supposed to be shy, not aggressive. He was wearing baggy gym shorts and a faded Barrington Academy tee. He must believe that his attractions needed no emphasis.

"We did as you suggested and reached out to some of the alumni. Helena's already becoming friends with some of them." Myka tilted her head in the direction of the group.

"They're great people. I went to Barrington with a few of the guys and Meredith was a freshman my senior year." His voice was casual, easy, but there was something suspiciously like a question in his eyes. Great people, but only one of their names had been on the list of contacts he had given them.

"We worked off your list, and then Helena was doing some Internet searches and came across Charlotte's Facebook account. She thought the wider the net, the better the results." Myka tried to make her smile warmer. She wasn't sure that her reply had fully answered the question he had left unspoken between them, but his appraisal of her had become bolder, lingering on her shoulders before dropping down to her hips.

"Whatever brought you here is fine by me . . . are you running?" He stepped into her space, his finger a millimeter from a corner of her bib number.

Myka retreated a step or two. "Yes, I'm the one who's going to try and get some cardio out of this."

"Good, I'll see if I can catch you." He winked at her, and then as Helena, almost crossly, shouted "Myka!," he began to back away from the swings, cockily smiling at Helena as she strode past him.

"Darling," she said in exasperation, "the race is about to start, and here I find you chattering away with Bryce." She had said it loudly enough for DeWitt to overhear her, but the look in her eyes counseled Myka to remain silent until she was closer. She placed an arm around Myka's back and rested her hand on Myka's abdomen, which felt weirdly intimate, as if she were pregnant and Helena was trying to embrace both her and the baby. Weird but not unpleasant, and Myka didn't find herself pulling away. Helena whispered in her ear, "Very nice. Laura couldn't take her eyes off the two of you."

"He's creepy," Myka complained, keeping her voice low, and feeling childish as she did so. Maybe it was Helena's hand on her belly that had her suddenly hungry and out of sorts and wanting nothing more than to put her feet up somewhere and nap.

"Because he doesn't see you, he sees a mark, somebody he can use." Helena's hand had begun to move a little bit on her belly, and Helena's breath was tickling her ear.

"And how is that different from what you did?" Myka wasn't absolutely sure she had said it until Helena's hand left her belly and gripped her chin, not gently, to turn it toward her.

She met a look that was equal parts fury and hurt. "Because you should have been a mark, but you weren't. You became more than that to me. I loved you, Myka, I still do." Myka shut her eyes, ready to elbow Helena away from her when Helena's arm around her back tightened and the sound of Helena's voice seemed to thrum against her own lips. "I imagine it's the last thing you want to do, but you're going to have to let me kiss you. Those women expect to see it. You're my loving wife about to head off to the field of battle, although if you can't place well among a bunch of teenagers and paunchy, middle-aged men, then you're clearly not the woman I thought you were." At the ragged humor in her voice, Myka opened her eyes. The hurt was still visible, but the fury had not so much subsided as wilted, as if Helena had realized that the greater outrage would always be, should always be Myka's.

Her own voice unsteady, Myka said, "So help me, if you slip in your tongue in, I'll fucking bite it off."

"That shouldn't be arousing, but it is," Helena admitted, the hand leaving Myka's chin to thread itself through Myka's hair. The kiss was firm but brief and prim, and Myka could have been on her first date or a 1940s movie but for the way Helena held her, no, the way she let herself curve around Helena. Then it was done, and Helena was letting her go, calling out for Christina, who ran to her from where she had been chasing Allison's six-year-old in a two-person game of tag. "Wish your mommy luck," Helena instructed her, lifting Christina to her hip, and Christina blew Myka a kiss like a Broadway veteran, shouting "Luck, My-ka!"

Myka adjusted her running shorts and her tank, pretending to ignore how much her fingers were trembling. She blindly veered off from the swings, realizing a few paces on that she was heading in the wrong direction. Correcting her course, she jogged toward the race's start line, behind which a mass of runners had loosely congregated. Barrington had achieved a good showing today, and, as if to underscore it, DeWitt's head bobbed above most of the others at the line, his hair glinting in the sunlight, the highlights a hard, bright gold that had her blinking and looking away.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geez, it's been a long time since the last update, but she's here. More angst, more suspicion. Will it ever end? Given the speed at which I'm posting, you're thinking "Probably not." Sadly, many of the fics I'm simultaneously working on are not here on AO3, but I am almost always writing, so there will be progress and, someday, a conclusion. Yes, we will see Nate our supervillain (not in this chapter but eventually), more cuteness from Christina, and more self-torment from Myka.

She adopted a pace that was somewhere between the lap-devouring running that was part of her normal workout and the speed-walking of an elderly woman. She had to appear somewhat competitive - who knew what crap Helena had been posting about her (it would be like her to claim that her wife was a triathlete) - and yet attuned to where her "family" was in their circuit of the park, their progress adapted to a four-year-old's microsecond attention span. At the same time, she had to engage with Bryce DeWitt during the race if she could manage it, further encourage him in his suspicion that she was a spouse seeking distraction, whatever it took to get a lead, a break in this case. Of the three demands upon her, she knew which one called the most powerfully to her. Without asking herself if it was the best use of her time, she slowed, letting the crowd of runners, and speed walkers, pass her, and she walked back along the path, skirting groups of children and mothers until she saw her child, well, her child for the day anyway.

Christina was walking with two older children, their heads bobbing a few inches above hers. Whose were they? Charlotte's? Meredith's? Usually she kept track of even the smallest details, the under-the-radar conversations, the oblique glances, all the things that other agents missed, or forgot. Myka's lips thinned in exasperation. Helena had given her all the facts she knew about the Barrington wives, including the names of their children. But driving past those winding driveways and imagining what the homes at the end of them looked like, what the people inside them looked like, she had gotten the faces of the Marstons stuck in her mind, their lovely, feral faces, and then there had been Helena telling her that she still loved her. She had lost focus.

"Hi, Myka-Myka," Christina said cheerily, waving at her. In the next moment, she was completely absorbed in the other two children's whispering and pointing at the runners far ahead of them. Myka smiled, tousling Christina's hair and looking toward the mothers, Helena among them, who were doing their own murmuring and pointing at their children. Her smile froze when she heard one of Christina's newfound friends ask her, "Why did you call her Myka-Myka? I thought she was your mother."

Christina said simply, as if what she called Myka was as timeless and immutable as a star, "It's what I've always called her."

The answer seemed to satisfy the other girl, and breathing easier, Myka waited until Helena and the Barrington wives caught up to her and then fell into step next to Helena. "Thought you'd be setting the pace for all of us, darling." The reproof in her tone was mild, but the look in the dark eyes was several degrees cooler. It was clear that, for Helena, the priority wasn't checking in on her and Christina. "We're quite all right here at the back of the back of the pack." She grinned at the woman walking on the other side of her, blond, of course, her appearance impeccably tended, as though she were going to host a charity ball after the charity 10K, her hair recently and expensively colored, her make-up expertly blended and unsmudged. Charlotte? Laura? Dammit, how could she not know? She had been introduced to them less than an hour ago. Not Laura, Laura would be with Bryce. Charlotte offered her a regal nod, glancing toward some ill-defined spot on the path far ahead, where Myka obviously should be, setting the pace. Mulishly, Myka decided to stay where she was, and Helena cut her an icy glare before amping up her grin at Charlotte and leaning her head in closely enough that their shiny hair almost touched. Myka knew the interest was an act, but the tilt to Helena's head, the wicked curve to her grin, she had once thought they meant something real, that Helena's absorption in her had been real.

What would happen if a strand of perfect blond hair (no matter that its color was artificial) intertwined briefly with a strand of hair as deeply black as a luxury sedan? Would that intimate commingling produce a new color, both black and gold, jewel-like, the dazzling combination of onyx set in a gold brooch or a gold necklace nestled in black velvet? Not that new, really, because oil was black and gold, liquid gold, and the Marstons had floated on it as if it were water. It had swept Helena and her indisputable talent at forging paintings into the Marston Gallery and the Marston home and then swept her back out, millions richer. It had carried her into the Marstons' beds as well, and there black and gold had commingled, too.

Without so much as a word to Helena and Charlotte, she broke into a run, flying out to the grassy border of the path and increasing her speed as she ran along it. It wasn't the measured, disciplined running that concluded her workouts; it was the pell-mell, limb-flailing running of a child, all energy and no control. Myka thought she heard Helena cry "Myka!," but she was listening to the thudding of her heart and the only slightly less rapid thudding of her feet on the ground. She passed teenagers with the leggy, loping strides of cross-country runners and middle-aged parents sneaking glances at their Fitbit watches. She passed the slowest of DeWitt's friends, too portly to play lacrosse now, and drew even with DeWitt. Matching him stride for stride was the last of the Barrington wives, Laura, and Myka was dismayed that she could have mistaken Charlotte for her. Both were blond, yes, but Charlotte carried herself with the self-regard of someone who believed her family was deserving of greater honors than an ambassadorship to Uruguay. Laura's regard, on the other hand, was all for Bryce. Her eyes lifted up to him frequently, and her expressions chased his, shadows following the sun. He was frowning, watching Myka, and his speed increased; he was determined not to let her outrun him - or get away. His friends seemed not to care that he was leaving them behind, all except Laura, who, frowning when he had frowned, let her frown lengthen as she recognized who had captured his interest.

His pursuit made Myka want to run only the faster, but this, this panicked flight, it was an indulgence, the privileged ones, the golden ones surrounding her, who were running, jogging, sauntering, power striding along the path weren't the Marstons. Even if Helena turned out to be the Helena of eight years ago, she wasn't the same Myka, and Helena couldn't hurt her like that, not anymore. Reluctantly Myka slowed and veered farther into the grass, placing her hands on her hips and bending at the waist as though she were seriously winded; it wasn't entirely an exaggeration.

A hand was on her back, rubbing, patting, attempting to comfort her. She wanted to shrug it off but resisted the impulse. "Are you all right? You were tearing up the park." Amusement was layered over the concern, and she had an image of that voice, so smooth, its pleasantness so practiced, shining, like his newly highlighted hair, in the sun. Myka suppressed a sigh; if she never saw anything remotely resembling gold again, it would be too soon. Unfortunately yellow, sun-bright yellow, was Christina's favorite color . . . . "What happened?" Bryce persisted. "I saw you go back to talk to your wife, and then you just took off."

This was her opportunity to play to the sympathy he was so willing to offer, to show her appreciation that someone cared and, by exaggerating her appreciation, suggest that her wife no longer cared. He needed to believe that the bickering he had witnessed between the two of them about Christina's schooling signaled a deeper rift, yet she couldn't make the invitation too obvious. Helena had said that it was her coolness to him, her indifference to the hair, the teeth, the smile, the charm that was her appeal. There was no challenge, and no sense of victory, in seducing a woman who hungered to be seduced. To seduce a woman who thought she was wise to every ploy, however -

"Nothing," she said curtly, drawing away. She didn't have to pretend that she wanted to put some distance between them.

"Your wife, she has a strong personality," he said, following her wandering course across the perfectly trimmed grass. Myka imagined a team of park employees on their hands and knees using nail scissors to snip each blade. "She reminds me of our biggest donors, wonderful people, the lifeblood of Barrington, extremely generous, but they want things done a certain way. It can get a little difficult when you have to tell them that other ideas have to be considered."

"Are you saying my wife is a difficult person?" Myka stopped, turning to face him.

She had confused him. He wasn't certain if she was teasing him, about to launch into him for insulting her wife, or seeking his concurrence. Shaking his head, he said with a wryness that acknowledged he might be saying exactly the wrong thing, "I think I said that she was a wonderful person, and they're only difficult when you have to get them thinking on a different track."

"Do you always parse your sentences like that?"

"I beg for money for a living. I say whatever I have to." He had closed the space between them, close enough now to touch her, but his hands were busy doing other things, scratching the back of his neck, plucking his sweaty t-shirt away from his stomach, and flashing her, probably not accidentally, with a glimpse of ridged muscle.

"I better get back to the race. I still have most of it to finish." Myka was tempted to sharply angle away from him as she returned to the path, but she forced herself to cut in and virtually brush against him as she passed him. A misstep would have her stumbling into him. "My wife, Bryce, is a pain in the ass, especially so today." He laughed, the explosive grunt a man might expel when someone he deemed weaker managed to land a sucker punch.

When she said that, she hadn't been pretending either.

Myka finished the race with a respectable time . . . for a woman ten years her senior. She hadn't tried to make up the ground she had lost, keeping to a steady, if unremarkable, pace and emptying her mind of everything but the sound of her breath going in and out. An ersatz meditation, but she had employed it a lot as a child trying to shut out her father's hectoring. She finished behind the teenagers and the Fitbit wearers but, thankfully, ahead of the speed walkers and even DeWitt and his friends. Helena and Christina had long since quit the race, but they were there at the finish line when she crossed it. Christina ran up to her and hugged her around her legs. "Did you win?" Her bib number with all the emoji stickers was streaked with melted chocolate ice cream.

Her mouth and the skin around it were streaked as well. Myka instinctively rubbed away a smear with her thumb as she said, "I didn't win, but it looks like you won the ice cream eating contest."

Christina giggled, drawing her arm across her mouth. Helena, who had been slower to join them, leaned over and tentatively kissed Myka on the cheek, murmuring "You're not going to run off on me again, are you? I do have to play the wife, you know." Her smile was easy, fond, but her eyes were narrowed with worry.

"I'm not going to freak out on you." Myka accepted the kiss but circled Christina to put her between them.

Helena didn't hide her exasperation, but she said only, "Good, because we've been invited to the post-run cookout that Barrington is sponsoring." She looked down at Christina and then at Myka. "I don't know why you're putting your faith in a four-year-old to protect you, but you're safe from me." Christina sunnily smiled up at the both of them, and Helena caressed her head, her tone indulgently scolding, "I don't know which of you is the bigger mess, but you," she tapped Christina's nose, "I can fix with a Wet Wipe." Directing her words at Myka but still gazing lovingly at her daughter, she added, "I told Charlotte that you were still upset with me over schools."

Myka lifted her hair and let it drop. She had bound it tightly this morning, but it was too thick, too wiry to stay bound for long. Her hair felt damp and tired, she felt damp and tired. "I'll apologize to her. Anyway, I got DeWitt's attention, and I thought that's what you wanted."

"Not at the cost of everyone else thinking you're erratic." Helena blew her breath out in an attempt to will away her irritation. "What was going on in that mind of yours? Tell me."

"It's not important now."

The event over, the three of them were just another obstacle for the volunteers to move around as they started to clean the sign-up area and path. Tables and chairs were being folded and stacked, and some volunteers young enough to be Barrington students were picking up discarded bib numbers and paper cups. One was shutting and locking the lid of a portable freezer unit covered with pictures of popsicles and ice cream cones. Christina looked longingly at the freezer, reaching out and clutching at the air like a toddler might, sending a wordless message to the volunteer that she could do with another treat. Helena put her hand over Christina's and curled her daughter's fingers into her palm, saying, "Come on, pumpkin, there will be hamburgers and hot dogs and all sorts of goodies where we're going," and gently but inexorably turned her away. "Highway robbery," she grumbled to Myka as she began to lead Christina farther into the park. "A tiny paper cup of soft-serve ice cream that some local Tastee Freeze sold them at a discount."

"It's charity, Helena." Myka shaded her eyes and pointed to an area of the park beyond the playground equipment, shaded by trees so tall and straight that she imagined them wearing the equivalent of back braces as saplings, the bent and knobby trees she had played among as a child, their trunks molded by harsh winds and a harsher climate, obviously not permitted here. There were picnic shelters under the trees and one of them had been claimed by Barrington alumni, a banner with 'Barrington' in the center draped, imperfectly, surprisingly enough, over the shelter's eaves. "Do you know how far that is from here? Christina will never make it." She crouched and gestured at Christina to climb onto her back. "Hey, sprout, let me give you a ride over there." Christina immediately dropped her mother's hand and jumped onto Myka's back. Grunting in dismay as Christina landed solidly on top of her, shoes digging into her ribs, Myka carefully straightened under Helena's jaundiced eye.

"Show-off," Helena muttered, but she helped to center Christina on Myka's back as Myka rose, Christina shrieking in delight and clutching at Myka's head. "If people are going to be asked to hand over seven dollars for a cup of ice cream, it should be something that might, at one point, have come from a cow. If you skimp on the food, people will think you're skimping on everything."

"Since when did you become a matron?" Myka said sarcastically. She grabbed Christina's ankles to steady her - and to keep the heels of Christina's shoes from drumming against her chest. "Are you going to start complaining that the other women in your bridge club serve off-brand cocktail peanuts and cheap gin?"

"Appearances matter. They're crucial when you're trying to pull off a scam. If things don't look the way people expect, if you don't behave the way people expect . . . that's when they start asking questions, not when you're promising them they'll double their money in six months." Glancing at Christina, she said, "Stop pulling on Myka's hair, pumpkin." In the same mildly chiding voice, she said, "It's why I dragged Christina halfway across the park to make sure we were at the finish line. I'm your wife, and I support you even if we are having a bit of a tiff. And it is just some garden variety marital tension. We're not putting on a two-woman show of a Tennessee Williams play, Myka."

Clamping her forearm across Myka's forehead, Christina asked, "What's a tiff, Mommy?"

"Remember when Nonni tells you to eat all your vegetables, and you say no? That's a tiff."

"Are you and Myka having a tiff about 'tbles?"

"In a manner of speaking." Her eyes narrowed again, but not completely in frustration. Myka could see that the concern in them hadn't gone away. "Myka needs to eat her broccoli."

Truth be known, she didn't mind broccoli. If Myka had to characterize this day as a vegetable, she would call it a pea, something that might have a pleasantly round appearance but was soft and squishy and smelled on the inside. Yet she had learned to eat peas, it was preferable to what happened if she didn't. She would banish her unease at spending time among people who reminded her of the worst moment of her life because, in the end, as privileged and unself-conscious about that privilege as they might be, they were children compared to the Marstons. The Marston family had had decades, over a century, of living, floating, as if what supported them bore no connection to the labor of others. Today she wasn't walking out of Marston Oil, sick with the knowledge that they knew she couldn't touch them, that they had known it when Helena had slipped under the sheets next to one of them and whispered, "I have the FBI wrapped around my little finger." DeWitt and his former lacrosse teammates might be robbing insurance companies blind, but they weren't literally or figuratively in bed with Helena Wells.

_She let Anthony Williams take her to the airport, though that hadn't been her intention. After the interview with the Marstons, she had wanted nothing more than to leave on the first flight out, but she and Anthony needed to debrief the Houston office, more as procedure on his part and courtesy on hers, because there was nothing that Houston, or New York, could do. Helena had seen to that. Myka had known before the debriefing started how ugly it would be, and it was one of the very few things she could say she had been right about. They had all gathered into a conference room, she, Anthony, Anthony's supervisor, and a few skeptical-looking agents, and she summarized what the Marstons had told them. Which had been both nothing and everything, but the everything, not said but smiled, Myka decided to leave out, even though the Houston agents probably knew that too. There had been no questions, and the agents, all except for Anthony and his supervisor, had silently filed out after she finished. Anthony's supervisor said only, "Thank you, Agent Bering," in a voice so dry that Myka thought the humidity in Houston might have dropped a degree or two. The Myka before the meeting with the Marstons would have already been scrambling, fighting for an opportunity to change what Anthony's supervisor, what the other agents, what Anthony thought of her, but the Myka who had emerged from that meeting, could only put her head in her hands. The Myka who had been sent to Houston, as devastated and humiliated as she was, was, nonetheless, a Myka preferable to the one she was now. This new Myka was leprous in her pitiable state, the other agents leaving the room unable to make eye contact with her. This Myka could sit in her shame like a baby would sit in its own . . . ._

_She left the conference room to unsteadily walk down the corridor, fish her phone from her bag, change her reservation. She could make a 5:00 p.m. flight to New York if she hurried. All she had to do was take the elevator to the lobby and raise her arm to flag a taxi once she was outside. She could do that much. A very large hand hesitantly touched her elbow. "Why don't you let me take you to the airport?" Anthony suggested._

_Of course he didn't just take her to the airport. He took her to her hotel, waited patiently in her room's one armchair, which seemed much too small for him, as she threw everything, including a complimentary shower cap she hadn't used, would never use, into her roller bag. He bought them both sandwiches at a fast food drive-through, and, in the calm, quiet voice he had been using with her since they left Marston Oil, urged her to eat the sandwich she had simply rested on her lap because "everything is worse on an empty stomach." She ate it, more at his bidding than because she was hungry. They must have carried on some sort of conversation; it was a long drive to the airport and the freeways were crowded, but she couldn't remember what they talked about. She was a teammate stumbling back from the bars, the quarterback who had tossed the game-losing interception; he treated her with a relaxed kindness that, as he guided her from place to place, handed her the sandwich, took her bag from the trunk at the drop-off area told her he had looked out for the lost and forlorn many times before._

_She tried to thank him, but he had merely nodded. Squinting into the distance, as if he suspected that what she might say next would be the thing to break her fragile self-control and he wanted to give her what shred of privacy he could, even if it was nothing more than turning his eyes away from her, he asked, "Are you afraid of what you'll do if you catch her?"_

_Yes. "I'm afraid I'll find a way to forgive her."_

Eventually she had forgiven Helena or what she let pass for it, an acceptance that Helena had acted as she had been trained to act. She was Gentleman Jim Wells' daughter and to have expected her to be something other than that, better than that wasn't Helena's fault but her own. In a world of snakes and mice, a snake became a mouse only when she faced a more dangerous snake, and Myka knew that she had never had the ruthlessness necessary to frighten Helena into divulging or abandoning her plans. She had never had the love that was necessary to change her either, although she couldn't have loved Helena more than she did. More than she had loved anyone before and probably more than she would love anyone in the future, but not enough.

The breeze had strengthened, the hazy sunlight obscured by clouds foretelling rain. Helena was tucking strands of her hair behind her ears or pushing it away from her face, the gesture reminding her of Christina, and Myka felt a tenderness so overwhelming that she didn't care whether Helena was a friend or an enemy or something in between. Instead of looking away, she watched Helena more intently as she mingled with the Barrington alumni, chatting, introducing herself, pointing at Christina, who was chasing herself when she lacked other children to chase, and then pointing at her. Canted above those cheekbones, the eyes shone with an interest purchased, like the tank and the running pants, for the occasion, the lips drawing up into continuous smiles; she was a performer, and Myka submerged the tenderness in admiration for how convincingly Helena could play a role, whether that of a lover or, on this afternoon, a woman resembling those around her, unburdened by her advantages. The rock of a ring on her finger, the BMW, the house on the Island, the private school shopping - some of it wasn't even fabricated, so perhaps the interest and enjoyment weren't either. This was the life that her father had aspired to, the goal of his schemes and cons. In fact, he had aspired to a life more princely, but this hopped-up Connecticut bedroom community wasn't a bad station along the way. Maybe Helena thought she would be content to rest here for a while.

Myka turned her attention to DeWitt, who was drinking a soft drink and flashing those white, white teeth at a small circle of alumni, mainly young, coincidentally pretty, women, younger and prettier than the Barrington wives. Very young professionals, just a few years out of law school or their MBA programs, if he lined them up now as donors, Barrington would have them for a lifetime. He caught Myka looking at him, and his smile became knowing, smug before he dipped his head to entertain a question.

"He can work the magic, can't he?" The words sought Myka's agreement, but the tone suggested the speaker was spoiling for a fight, hard and aggressive. Laura was standing next to her, arms not crossed over her chest but held tensely at her sides. Myka noticed that Laura's eyes were flicking between her and the women surrounding DeWitt, unsure which posed the greater threat.

"He does seem very capable of charming people out of their money."

Laura's eyes flicked back to stay on her. The dissatisfaction that she had worn throughout lunch, which had seemed to make even eating an imposition, surrendered to a stronger emotion, and Myka swore silently at the telling turn of phrase. Helena had warned her about being clumsy, and all she had done was further justify Laura's paranoia. "Is that all you think he is, some glad-hander for the school? Just because he doesn't manage a hedge fund or serve as a CEO doesn't make him any less smart or ambitious than Alex or Meredith. He has more drive than my husband."

Maybe she hadn't been as clumsy as she feared. While Laura clearly didn't appreciate another woman's interest in DeWitt, she resented what she perceived as another woman's slighting of him just as much. Not shrinking from Laura's half-disdainful, half-anxious regard, Myka said, "I saw the pictures in his office. He was the captain of the lacrosse team. Your husband was on it and Charlotte's too."

"They won everything the year Bryce was captain. Chris was a year behind him and Alex, and he aped everything they did. He still adores Bryce. I thought Bryce was pushy when I met him. He sees something and he wants it . . . ." Her voice softened, becoming dreamy and remote simultaneously. Aware of how she sounded, she blushed. "That was years ago, but they still follow him, Alex, Chris, and the others. He's smarter than all of them put together," she finished dismissively. Tilting her head in a gesture that managed to be both a dismissal and a polite withdrawal, Laura strode with purpose into the circle of women surrounding DeWitt and positioned herself next to him, edging out a woman who had been appreciatively patting his bicep.

Thinking she should try her luck with DeWitt's other ardent fans, Myka spotted Laura's husband Chris and Alex McCrossan at a mini wet bar, incongruously included as part of the picnic. Lunch had been a catered affair, offering as entrées grilled chicken, grilled (buffalo) burgers, and grilled portabellas on compostable paper plates and, as dessert, sliced fruit of various kinds. Many of the men and a fair number of the woman had fled to the bar for relief from all the nutritional earnestness on display. Aged premium whiskey, top-shelf Sonoma and Napa Valley wines, craft beers, even the water was branded as artisanal, and Myka could see the alcohol lapping in Alex's eyes. Practically giggling, he asked her if he could buy her a drink, and he did give the bartender, either bending down to pull a bottle from one of the shelves or turning and twisting to locate the right cooler behind him on the grass, a generous tip for a bottle of the artisanal spring water. Alex was taller and broader than Chris, possessing a voice that could easily carry across a boardroom and a meticulously razored haircut that left no hair longer than a quarter inch. She didn't have to prompt him for information, he was full of stories, mainly about his and his former teammates' escapades as students. He did, however, drop more current, and more relevant, information; the friends and their wives routinely vacationed together - "Whenever we can coordinate our schedules" - and often spent the better part of weekends at each other's homes - "Mine or Chris' or Meredith's, hardly ever Bryce's though." He held up another bill to catch the bartender's attention. "Bryce says it's because it's a mess. I think it's because that's where he has all his women stashed." He winked at her as he took the beer from the bartender. "If I still looked that good and wasn't married, I'd be collecting them too." He thumped his stomach, which did have the compact roundness of a melon. "But I'm fat with a wife and three kids, so I live vicariously through him." As Chris scoffed, Alex slyly grinned at him. "Don't pretend that you don't do it."

Chris rolled his shoulders. "This isn't the best conversation to have if we're trying to leave Myka with a good impression of Barrington." He hooked his thumb at Alex. "He still has the mind of a teenager. Don't listen to him about Bryce or Barrington. Bryce is hardly some slick ladies' man. He's got a lot more going on . . . ." Like his wife had earlier when she realized she was on the verge of being more open than she should about DeWitt, Chris let his voice trail off. "Anyway, give Barrington a good hearing. It's a great school." He nudged Alex and pointed at a few older kids sitting at a picnic table, heads bowed over the phones in their hands. "Let's go over there and make sure our sons aren't posting anything that could get us arrested."

Myka watched Alex lumber across the grass while Chris followed at his heels, guiding him with a push to his back when he began to drift too much to one side or the other, a herding dog keeping his much larger charge on course. People were beginning to leave in search of their children and their cars. The sky was steadily darkening, and rain wasn't far off. Tossing her empty bottle in a strategically placed recycling bin, Myka looked for Helena and Christina. Darting around and squeezing between families, women from the classes that graduated in the '90s and '00s saying farewell as if oceans were about to separate them instead of expressways and men promising to see each other next on the driving range, she didn't actively listen to what she was hearing, indifferent to the boomeranging pleas to call and text. Indifferent, until, as she avoided colliding with two men more intent on looking at a picnic table behind them than watching where they were going, she overheard the name McCrossan as in "Lucky for McCrossan that his father-in-law has connections because he's a fucking idiot." Slowing and flexing one of her legs as if she had developed a cramp, she followed the men's gazes, fixed on Chris and Alex at the picnic table. Alex was holding up his son's phone and taking goofy selfies of them sticking out their tongues and holding their fingers like rabbit ears above each other's head as Chris observed them with resigned amusement. It was pretty hard to disagree with the other men's assessment. On the other hand, maybe all she was eavesdropping on was some alcohol- and testosterone-fueled carping.

"I wouldn't invest in a piggy bank he represented."

"He and Chris Jeffries were the ones talking up Galter Pharmaceutical, remember? There was some new diabetes drug that was going to work wonders. The drug went bust, the stock went bust, and I heard Jeffries lost close to a million himself. But next thing I hear, Jeffries was plowing cash into a new golf resort on Hilton Head."

"You know they got that insurance money last year. Their house was robbed and some of his wife's jewels were taken -"

"But my wife heard it wasn't all that much, $30,000 or $40,000. Not enough for the kind of investment he was making."

"Maybe money grows on trees where they live."

They passed out of her hearing, and Myka stopped flexing and massaging her leg. She was about to rub a cramp into it. Interesting conversation, but not enough to get a warrant for Chris' or Alex's financial information. She hoped that Helena had found out something more helpful. Twisting her head to take in a 180 degree view of the park, she was surprised to discover that Helena and Christina were so near. Amazing what she could see when the golden ones weren't obscuring her vision. Helena was holding Christina and the sight of the two dark heads touching had Myka battling against another wave of tenderness, as if today really had been just a picnic and the family they pretended to be the reality and the con artist and agent they actually were a game, a secret joke that she and Helena would laugh about when they were home.

Legs clamped around her mother's waist, Christina was nestled against her shoulder as Helena talked with DeWitt and Laura. The young women he had been charming were gone, maybe frightened off by the lowering clouds or murdered in a jealous rage by Laura. Seeing Helena shift from foot to foot as she tried to comfortably balance Christina's weight, Myka started walking faster. Without asking or taking much note of the fact that she was doing it, she held out her arms and Christina drowsily leaned over and looped her arms around Myka's neck. Going through her own foot-shifting dance as she tried to manage the solid weight that was Christina, she ignored Helena's strange, blinking look at the two of them and focused on the body language of Laura and DeWitt. As Laura attempted to eliminate the space between them, DeWitt seemed determined to widen it, stepping forward and smiling his aggressive grin at Christina. "She's been running around all afternoon. This is the first time I've really gotten to see her." He looked from Myka to Helena. "She's an angel."

Christina was unimpressed by the flattery, letting out an unangelic whine and burying her head in Myka's shoulder. Myka couldn't help but agree with her. She would have sworn that DeWitt's teeth had gotten brighter as the day progressed. He was talking now about another charity event being sponsored by another school, and he was so close and his teeth so sharp and white, that she could almost feel them nipping at her, eager to tear into her flesh.

"You'll want to do that, darling, won't you?" Helena said, striking the perfect balance between suggestion and command. "You'll get to compare what you've heard about Barrington with what you'll hear about Lynley. Just think of the lists of pros and cons you'll get to make." She mock-whispered behind her hand to DeWitt and Laura. "She loves making lists."

The sweetly nagging wife. The wife who didn't miss an opportunity to point up her spouse's foibles. Myka had no difficulty rolling her eyes, which elicited a polite laugh from DeWitt and no reaction at all from Laura. "Sounds like a great opportunity," she said with an interest she hoped sounded sincere. "Next weekend?"

"Two weeks," DeWitt said genially. "It's on the Island. You probably won't need directions, but I'll e-mail you the packet." He blinded Helena with a smile. "Will we see you there?"

"Unfortunately I have another obligation, so I guess I'll have to entrust the care of my wife to you," Helena said, her smile showing even more teeth than DeWitt's.

"I'll take very good care of her," he assured her, while his eyes bored into Myka's. "You won't mind if I'm your escort, will you?"

Myka made some noncommittal gesture, and then Laura was practically dragging him away, muttering a cool and uninviting "Make sure to look us up" in Myka's direction.

Watching them leave, Helena said, "It's been a good day . . . that way." Turning her gaze to Myka and then to Christina sleeping against her shoulder, she let her lips crook disbelievingly before shaking her head. "I never thought I would . . . . " She didn't finish, instead saying with an exhaustion that was utterly unfeigned, "It's time you take me back to my cell."

Yet, after another long crawl back to the Frederic home, when she was lifting a fussy, crying Christina from her car seat, Helena wasn't quite ready to be locked away for the night, saying plaintively, "I know we need to deliver her to Jemma, but can I have her for a little longer? She'll be such a bear if we take her back now." Smoothing Christina's hair away from where strands had stuck to her cheek, feathered against her skin like flowers pressed between the pages of a book, Helena murmured, "Do you want to stay with Mommy or go back to Nonni's?" And when Christina said with a gulp that was part yawn, part sob, "Mommy," Helena sent Myka a victorious look that declared the matter settled.

Fighting with the car seat as she tried to lock it into place in the back of her car - Mrs. Frederic's BMW returned to the garage, undented and unscratched - Myka argued with herself that Helena's keeping Christina for another hour or two made little difference at this point. Given the hostility that characterized his relationship with Helena, if Ben Winslow were to learn that she and Jemma had violated the terms of the custody arrangement, whether Christina had been with her mother 15 minutes or 15 hours outside their allotted visits would be the same to him. Besides, she wasn't ready to face the traffic out to the Island, not yet. To make the most of their endangerment of Helena's visitation rights, she and Helena should at least pool what they had learned from their afternoon with DeWitt and his friends, but Myka suspected that Helena was no more enthusiastic about the prospect than she was. While the purpose of the day had been to further an investigation, Myka had felt less like an agent than a parent, and a worn-out one at that, lugging a child and their gear back and forth, pretending a sociability she didn't feel with people she didn't know, and creeping along freeways at 40 miles an hour. The agent could be resurrected tomorrow.

However, greeted with the spectacle of a crying Christina flying toward her, shouting "Nononononono," as Helena glowered at her daughter from the kitchen, Myka gave herself a moment to rethink the wisdom of delaying the trip to the Island. Christina, wholeheartedly sobbing now, was holding up her arms for Myka to pick her up, and Myka, bewildered, asked, "Do I hold her, do I send her to a corner, or do I stand here and continue to look helpless?"

"You're doing the latter very well," Helena said dryly, slumping into a chair at the small table in the dining area. "Pick her up, and we'll see if that puts her in a better mood. She said she was hungry, I said I would cut her up an apple, and the next thing I knew she was throwing a tantrum."

Myka settled Christina on her hip. Still sobbing, but at a quieter volume, Christina rubbed her eyes and yawned. "What's so terrible about an apple? What did an apple do to you?"

"Don't want it," Christina said mutinously, tossing her head and coming within an inch of clipping Myka in the chin.

Myka, her head tilted uncomfortably, tried to point it to the sofa. "Why don't we sit and think of something you would want to eat?" Christina seemed unpersuaded, but she let Myka set her down on a cushion without protest and then burrowed into her side as Myka sank into the corner of the sofa. Food had never been a negotiating tool in the Bering household. That wasn't quite true, her father had threatened to withhold it from her and Tracy when they had been guilty of some infraction or another as in "If you damn kids don't shut up, I'll send you to bed without your supper," but that she and Tracy might have a voice in what they ate, the thought had never entered their minds, and even if it had, their father would have been sure to shout it down. Twizzlers obviously weren't an option, though Myka believed she could consume an entire package herself given the chance. Recalling the snacks she had seen Jemma give Christina, she dropped her head over the back of the sofa and looked at Helena. "Got any crackers and peanut butter?" Helena made a face at the suggestion, which Myka ignored. She poked Christina in the shoulder. "How about crackers and peanut butter?"

Eyebrows drew together over the nose that was Helena's in miniature. Adopting the brisk authority that had always had Pete swallowing whatever he had just crammed into his mouth and sitting up straighter, Myka said, "I'm going to have some, and if you want some, you're going to have to promise not to shout at your mom. You hurt her feelings."

Christina grimaced, although Myka couldn't have said whether she was considering the suggestion, hating the idea of crackers and peanut butter, or regretting giving up the opportunity of shouting at her mother. She pushed herself to her knees and then pulled herself up and practically over the sofa. "I won't shout at you, Mommy, if you give me crackers."

"Not quite the surrender I was looking for, but I'll take it." Eyeing her daughter suspiciously, as if she knew a Wells wasn't to be immediately taken at her word, Helena said warningly, "You promise?"

"Promise."

They ate the crackers in the living room; the saltines were stale, but Christina didn't seem to mind, a pile of crumbs growing in her lap. As the peanut butter gummed against her teeth, Myka acknowledged to herself that she had enjoyed peanut butter and crackers more when she was a child, but it was keeping Christina quiet and content. She had tried to give up her spot on the sofa to Helena, but both Helena and Christina had firmly shaken their heads. Helena was sprawled in an armchair, eyes almost closed. Christina was becoming a heavier, warmer weight against her side, but as Myka shifted to get up and let her stretch out on the cushions, Christina snuggled tighter. "Story."

"I'm not much of a storyteller," Myka protested. "Maybe your mom will tell you a story."

Helena's eyes opened briefly. "I made those blasted peanut butter crackers, you have to tell her a story."

"I'm not very good."

"It won't matter. She's half-asleep, I'm half-asleep."

Like indulging a child's preference for what food she ate, Myka had thought that parents reading or telling their children bedtime stories was largely a myth. She couldn't remember asking for bedtime stories, although they had lived above a bookstore. Her father would have seen it as a sign of weakness. "What? You're too afraid of the dark to go to sleep?" Her mother, more willing, would have interrupted herself a thousand times. "Goldilocks found the first bowl of porridge too hot . . . that reminds me, we need to go grocery shopping, we're almost out of cereal. Warren? Warren, we need to go grocery shopping tomorrow." Myka figured she couldn't do any worse than her parents. She could start with a princess, a bedtime story staple, and Christina liked princesses.

"There once was a young princess," she began. Distractedly patting Christina's head as she fumbled for the next sentence, Myka elaborated, "A young princess with beautiful dark hair."

"Are you going to draw her?" Christina looked up at her blearily. "Mommy always draws the princesses."

There was a muffled laugh from the armchair.

"Not unless you want stick people. This mommy doesn't draw." It had sounded perfectly natural as she said it, and then she heard it. Her face and chest expanded with heat. "I'm sorry, it just came out -"

"It's nothing, and you were a mommy today, whether or not you realize it." Helena still had one leg slung over the arm of her chair, and her hair, freed from its ponytail, draped itself over her shoulders. Her smile was lazy, but the eyes were open and alert. Myka felt them on her as she haplessly stitched one absurdity to the next, such as setting the princess on an adventure to find her lost hair. Maybe it was the shimmering fall of Helena's that had put the idea in her head, but why the princess had lost her hair and how, she left unexplained, although she did offhandedly refer to an encounter with a dragon. Similarly unexplained was how the princess acquired a companion, a knight seeking a place in her father's court. His blundering and insatiable appetite were Pete's, but so too were his loyalty and knack for delivering the right solution at the right time. His description of pulling it out of his ass, Myka G-rated to "found it on the tip of my lance," not that it made any difference to Christina. Ass, lance, armor, she didn't understand what any of it meant, interrupting only when Myka put "princess" and "dragon" in close proximity. "Don't let the dragon hurt the princess," Christina would solemnly counsel her, "'cause she's got to wear the glass shoe and marry the prince." Thankfully Christina had written the end for her. All she had to do was get the princess and the knight into the dragon's cave and back out of it with the princess' hair intact. Helena unhelpfully asked, "Wouldn't the dragon have incinerated it already? Not to mention the princess, but I don't mean to be a critic."

Myka stared at her stonily. She had said that she was a crappy storyteller. Taking a breath, she led the princess and the knight into the dragon's cave. By the time she had them running out of it, hair hastily clapped onto the princess' head, there was no need to insert the glass slipper and the prince; Christina was asleep, and Helena had apparently been driven from the room. Moving her hip out from under Christina's head and then slipping a sofa pillow underneath it, Myka went in search of Helena. She found her in her bedroom. The room was dark, the curtains having been drawn over the windows, and Helena was curled in the center of the bed, but it was defensive and protective the way in which she was curled, and Myka sensed the unhappiness before she heard Helena's voice, thick and clogged, asking if it was time for them to leave. Not thinking about what she was doing, acting on impulse as she had been doing for most of the day, Myka sat on the bed next to her and gently ran her thumb under Helena's eye.

"I wasn't crying."

"Was my story that awful?"

"It was awful but not that awful." Helena wriggled to the edge of the mattress, leaving room for Myka to lie down on the bed with her.

Myka tried to ignore the invitation. "It put Christina to sleep."

"How else was she to escape from your storytelling?" Helena laughed quietly, but it was more sigh than laugh and didn't last long. "You haven't told me what was going on with you earlier today. You were walking with me and Charlotte and, out of nowhere . . . ." Her voice became unsteady, and Helena didn't try to disguise the catch in it. "Out of nowhere, you gave me a look of utter loathing and then you started running, as if you couldn't get away fast enough." She pressed her lips together for a moment before she said, her tone level, even. "It wasn't out of nowhere. I can't miss the 'if looks could kill' glares and I can tell when you would like nothing more than to rip into me. I understand the hatred, Myka, I really do. You probably won't believe it, but I even share it. But this morning, it was though as I was some pile of shit you had stepped in. It's your contempt that guts me." She laughed again, the kind of thin, humorless laugh that Myka recognized was the sound people made when they feared that their next sound might be a sob. She had laughed a lot like that too when she had talked about Helena, until she had realized it was easier to simply stop talking about her. "I'm not saying I don't deserve it, I'm saying it guts me."

"It's not contempt, Helena." She got up from the bed only to walk to the other side of it and stretch out on the mattress next to her. If she were thinking, she wouldn't be doing this. If she were thinking, she would have already left the room in search of the monitor, because she wasn't ready to have this discussion, not the way it was happening. It was supposed to happen more dramatically; she was supposed to have her hands around Helena's throat and Helena was supposed to be drowning in tears, so ashamed and so contrite that she had no defense against weeping. She certainly wasn't supposed to have enough pride, enough dignity to laugh that thin little not-laugh. The room should be thick with "I'm sorry's" so Myka could cleanse it with her righteous anger, but she didn't feel all that angry right now.

"Bates sent me down to Houston a second time, to interview David and Hilary Marston. He knew they weren't going to give you up, he just wanted to punish me. So I sat in a conference room with them for half an hour as they basically laughed at me." Helena had rolled over to look at her, and Myka felt her suddenly still. "So, yeah, hanging around with a bunch of people who remind me of the Marstons puts me on edge, but I encounter the rich and spoiled all the time. It was seeing you with them that tipped me over. You say I gut you. You broke me, Helena, because I didn't know until I was in that conference room . . . I didn't know there was nothing that you . . . I didn't know." She felt stupid repeating "I didn't know" over and over, but it seemed the truest to what she had experienced. 'I didn't know that you had fucked them' was too literal. 'I didn't know how deep the betrayal went' sounded too theatrical. But 'I didn't know' captured the innocence she wasn't aware she had had tucked away somewhere until it was gone. How there had remained a pocket of it after 18 years with Warren Bering and two years with the FBI was a mystery, but it had existed. Then.

"What do you need to know, Myka? Which one it was? How many times? How much do you want me to hurt you?"

"You can't hurt me with it. Not anymore."

She felt Helena's thumb skimming the skin under her eye. "That's not true." Myka touched her face, and it was wet. Eight years, and she was still a mouse in Helena's presence.

Helena turned over again but worked backward across the bedspread until her butt bumped against Myka's legs. Unresisting, Myka let Helena take her arm and place it around her waist. "Do you want to know what I gave you up for? Not for the Marstons or for the money. I gave you up for two words, 'Good job.' For years I painted what my father told me when he told me, but the Marston Gallery was mine. I would do what he couldn't, pull off a truly successful multi-million dollar heist. David and Hilary, greedy little bastards, they were just a bonus. I had met them doing a restoration for one of their friends, and they made the plan all that much easier to put into motion. Then it all went to shit."

"Because of me," Myka said sardonically.

"Yes, because of you. He took it away from me, you know, Jim did, at the very end. Joshua Donovan told him I was going to fuck things up, and Jim sent me to some place tropical where I took many, many drugs for a long time. There was never going to be a 'Good job' from him after that." She issued another not-laugh, but it wasn't thin and metallic. Instead it was bitten-off, as if she had had occasion to laugh that way many times before and she had worn it out. "Jim never had me work another job for him, said he couldn't trust me. Which was fair, I couldn't trust myself, not for a big score. I cobbled together odd jobs from old friends and business partners, nickel-and-dime scams for the most part. And when he died, I fed at his corpse; he would have expected no less. Forging his paintings was the most ambitious thing I had done since setting up the Marston Gallery theft." Myka didn't know how much of it was true, but Helena sounded remorseful, sincerely remorseful. Perhaps it was only about the loss of her father's approval, but that was something. "I'm not expecting you to feel sorry for me, I'm only trying to tell you how it was for me afterward. There was no big payout, Myka. The Marstons took a hefty cut, and Jim took the rest." She sighed. "Joshua never forgave me for it, but that's another story for another day."

For a long time, or so it seemed to Myka, there was only the sound of their breathing and the occasional rustle of the bedspread as they made slight adjustments to their positions. Helena hadn't rolled away from her, and she hadn't taken her arm from around Helena's waist. It wasn't comfortless this intimacy they were sharing, not exactly, but Myka felt she was reaching down from the moon to hold her. "I don't want to hear about how sorry you are or how I was the cross you hung yourself on. What I need to hear, Helena, is how whichever Marston it was made you come until you were inside out. I need to hear how the two of you laughed about me. I need to hear how you couldn't wait to see David, or Hilary, again. Don't ever tell me you hated it . . . because I know better." Although she was reaching down from the moon, her face was pressed against the back of Helena's neck, and she didn't need to feel its wetness to know that she was crying again.

"I didn't hate it," Helena said. She said it soothingly, as if she were talking to Christina. "Sometimes it was a relief. There was only so much of your goodness and devotion I could stand, Myka. The Wellses, we're alley cats, and if I have some sliver of morality it's because you and Christina put it there." She twisted around, her grip on Myka's arm iron, and her free hand went up to stroke Myka's hair and she pressed tiny, hard kisses on the bulge of Myka's jaw. "It was a job, with them, before I met you, and it remained a job. It was part of the deal. One of them was satisfied with the money and the thought of screwing over their parents, and the other one wanted more of a . . . guarantee." Her breath was warm and peanut buttery, and Myka felt it move up closer to her ear. "I know what you really want to hear. You want to hear that no one made me come until I was inside out except you. You want to hear that I wanted no one like I wanted you. And that part was always true, Myka. I've never lied about how I feel about you, not all those years ago, not today."

Myka heard the muffled thumping of Helena's heart. It was beating as fast as her own. She knew Helena wouldn't resist her rolling down the running capris and parting her thighs. Myka knew what she would find because she knew what Helena would find if Helena were to push down her shorts. It was there in their breathing, no longer relaxed and measured but shallow and rapid. She understood wanting relief from her discipline and her conscientiousness; she wanted relief from it. But Helena was pushing away from her, telling her to go and bring back the monitor while she woke Christina. She was almost out of the room before Helena's voice stopped her.

"I want all of you, Myka, not what you're willing to give me now." Helena was shrugging, looking embarrassed and proud and pleading all at once. "If the Wellses had ever been content with what they could have, the lot of us might have escaped prison. But we're not built that way, we dream big. And I want what I saw this afternoon, I want us with our daughter."

Myka went downstairs and searched much harder than necessary for the monitor. She didn't see Irene Frederic, but it didn't mean that Mrs. Frederic wasn't quietly waiting, surveilling, spinning her web in another room. The monitor was in plain sight on an end table, but Myka had overlooked it. She had been too busy forcing herself to think about snakes. Snakes could go for months without eating. She had heard that somewhere. She wondered if they dreamed of their future meals as they hibernated or did whatever they did when they weren't eating for months on end. She was honest enough to admit that she had wanted to hear what Helena whispered in her ear and she wanted to have what Helena had just held out to her. Maybe Helena even believed her own fantasy about what they could be to one another, but Myka couldn't afford not to recognize that Helena had been in hibernation for a very long time . . . and she was hungry.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Think of this as the first part of one very long chapter because it's going to be a rough weekend for one Myka Bering. I needed to introduce some new developments and begin tying up some of the older plot threads, and I decided to do that now. So Myka will be worn out, and I'll be worn out . . . .

It was another atrocious entry fee to sign up for the Lynley School's 10K, but Myka, her eyes sliding away from Pete's no matter how hard she tried to fix them on his, had told him to look on the bright side, they weren't having to pay for Helena as well this time. There is no bright side to her, he had responded, more grimly than jokingly, only darkness. Myka had offered him a twist of her lips that might have been a grimace or a particularly rueful smile. She wasn't sure how she felt anymore about Helena or the wisecracks Pete and the other agents continued to make about her. Not that she was Helena's champion, far from it. But the only thing that had stopped her from letting their quiet holding of each other on Helena's bed become something that wasn't quiet and something more than holding had been Helena herself. It had seemed simply another lapse, another chink in that wall of law enforcement rectitude that she had imagined she and Sam were presenting to Helena when they had visited her in prison. Sam had been the first one to weaken the wall when he had used Helena's child to coerce her cooperation in going after Burdette, yet it hadn't crumbled. Not then and not later, as the wall, or Myka's vision of it, became less a wall that was impenetrable, indestructible, and more a wall that didn't act as much of a wall at all, which allowed in virtually everything it was supposed to keep out. A paper screen in a Japanese home, on one side of which she was Helena's overpaid babysitter on Sunday afternoons and, on the other, Helena's wife and Christina's (other) mother. She could see the shadows of what could have been dancing across the paper, but the sides remained separate.

She couldn't cling to that illusion any longer. Helena, by saying she wanted her back, had kicked away the screen. She had divined that it was what Myka had wanted to hear - not that it had been some great feat of intuition – and on some level, Myka knew, whether Helena was being sincere didn't matter to her. She had wanted to hear the words so badly for so long that once they were said she couldn't bear to examine how true they were. Now Myka almost wished that Helena hadn't let her come-and-go virtuousness come and drive them from the bed because, if nothing else, the pleasure would have justified the guilt. As it was, since that Saturday, Myka had barely been able to look at Pete, let alone look him in the eye, and her relationship with Sam was faring no better. She had been avoiding his texts and calls, and the one night he had come to her apartment, so late that she was guaranteed to be home, she had taken him to bed with a ferocity meant to keep her guilt at bay but which she had let him mistake for passion. He was still marveling at the scratch marks a week later, as his latest text had made embarrassingly clear.

Oddly enough, the only time her guilt didn't leave her tongue-tied or cause her to stare at the floor when she was forced to speak was when she was with Helena. It wasn't that she had gone over to the dark side of the Force, as Pete would put it, it was that, for the first time since Helena had been released from prison, Myka felt there was something honest in their interactions. If she allowed herself to believe that Helena still wanted her, she would have to allow for the possibility that there was truth in the other things that Helena had told her. While what was true might be nothing more than that elemental attraction between them, which, like a cockroach it seemed, would live on after every other feeling they had for one another died off, that truth, that fact steadied her, a little bit. It was like being able to touch the bottom of a pool on tiptoe; it didn't mean you couldn't drown, but you could maintain the illusion that the water wasn't closing over your head.

Which perhaps answered why she was tolerating Helena's coaching her about her strategy for tomorrow morning's encounter with Bryce DeWitt. Helena was telling her that she needed to let DeWitt make a move but not until she knew Laura Jeffries would witness it. A difficult task to accomplish, Helena conceded, since DeWitt would try to ensure that Laura was nowhere near, so Myka needed to see to it that Laura was even more motivated not to let him out of her sight. "She's our leverage. We break her, we break her husband, we get DeWitt."

"What do you want me to do? Tell her that I intend to screw her boyfriend as soon as we cross the finish line?" Myka was shredding one of the paper napkins that had been shoved inside the sack with their sandwiches and piling the shreds on Helena's dining table.

"I should hope you would be more subtle than that," Helena said, but the sharpness of her tone was undercut by her pushing another napkin across the table for Myka to shred. "I also hope you're going to properly dispose of that mess instead of leaving it for me to clean up."

Myka didn't answer. This was the fourth or fifth time - she was beginning to lose count - she had ended up at Helena's apartment since that Saturday. Sometimes she arrived with food, sometimes Helena heated something up, a frozen Stouffer's entree or one of Mrs. Frederic's ready-to-eat meals, which, Helena claimed, she continued to supply her with, free of charge, on a regular basis. ("I think she missed having someone to cook for," Helena had said, closing her eyes in pleasure after taking a Tupperware container labeled "Penne with Homemade Pesto" from the refrigerator.) Neither one of them had remarked yet on the frequency with which Myka was stopping by, ostensibly to discuss the cases they were working on, although she was staying long after any work-related discussion had ended. Neither one of them had mentioned the fact that, if it wasn't so late that Helena would have already called to talk to Christina about her day and to wish her goodnight, she would call while Myka was with her and then put Christina on speaker phone so Christina could chatter to them both. It wasn't always clear to Myka afterward what she and Helena had talked about when they weren't arguing over cases or teasing Christina; they weren't reminiscing about moments they had shared when they were together - their avoidance of that subject was total and mutual - but they also weren't engaging in stilted conversations about politics or the books they had been reading. Myka realized that she had come to know more about Helena in the space of four or five evenings than in all the months she had lived in Helena's loft.

Her stories weren't all about Jim Wells and their contentious relationship; some were about Charlie, whom she didn't get to know until she returned to the States when she was 18, and others were about scraping by with her mother, in one down-at-the-heels rental after another in the poorer Inner London boroughs. "She was just a girl when she met Jim and not much more than a girl when she had me. She had no skills, no education, nothing to fall back on once they split up. Her family disowned her when she took up with him. When he was flush, he would drop some money on me, that is, when he remembered he had a daughter. She thought they were married and then found out he was still married to his first wife. She'll never admit it to anyone, though. She has her pride, my mum, she maintains to this day that I'm not a bastard." Helena laughed at herself derisively. "Not by birth anyway. Can't say what she'll fess up to about me in other contexts."

As Myka listened, she sometimes glimpsed the little girl who had loved dolphins, the woman who had tended to her sprained ankle and given her the bed and slept on the loveseat in the Berkshires. She wondered if Helena gave any thought to whom she might have become had her father not seen . . . and warped . . . her talent. She had had a name as a restorer and, to a lesser degree, as an artist of original works; she could have given her energy to either pursuit. Or she could have taught in an art school. Shredding the napkin Helena had given her, Myka imagined her sitting at a table very much like this one helping a daughter very much like Christina color a picture in a coloring book. Helena's spouse, shadowy and genderless, was in the background. That could have been her life.

But it wasn't. Helena had called herself, all Wellses, alley cats. You didn't take in an alley cat because it would behave or curl up on your lap at night. You didn't take it in because you expected an equal exchange, food for love. You would end up more devoted to the cat than the cat was to you, but it wasn't an entirely one-sided relationship. As long as you kept your eyes on its claws and accepted that its needs would always come first, you could live with an alley cat. Myka mused that maybe she was learning to live with her alley cat. Maybe she valued the intermittent pleasure of Helena's company more than Sam, more than the agency itself. Scorpion, snake, alley cat, these weren't creatures you cuddled close, but then neither was Warren Bering, at least not as he had been. She had learned from him first, not Helena, that love carried a sharp sting. Nothing made her more impatient or regret any the less the blunting of that corrosive tongue than her father's hesitant "I love you" right before he handed the phone back to her mother.

Recent mellowing notwithstanding, however, Myka was going to take only so much lecturing from Helena on how to run a con, even as feeble a one as they were attempting to run on DeWitt. "Laura's seen him flirt with other women, and I'm sure she knows, regardless of whether she's willing to admit it, that he does more than flirt. Why do you think seeing him with me will make her roll on him? We have to come up with something else."

Helena threw her hands up in the air. "I would love it if we had something else, but you won't let me do anything that might actually work, even if it is illegal, and we have nothing more suspicious than the fact that the potential perpetrators and the victims attended the same school." As the hands came down, she swept one through her hair in frustration. "You're not some 24-year-old Barrington alumna at a charity event. You're her, you're a wife, a mother. Didn't you say she told you that she had first found DeWitt pushy? Until he seduced her, she probably had had no idea she was searching for a distraction. Watching him move in on you, she's seeing it for what it is, what he is. No great love affair, just a manipulator playing a game." She took a deep breath. "Don't get impatient and try to hurry the process along. That's the worst thing you can do. Your only responsibility is to make sure she's where she needs to be to watch her snake go after another mouse."

"I'm really tired of being a mouse."

Helena laughed again, affectionately. "You'd make a worse snake."

She would make a horrible snake, she didn't disagree; it was why she was assenting to DeWitt's suggestion that they have lunch, just the two of them, in one of his favorite cafés on the Island, assenting without saying yes, without smiling or flirting, assenting despite the fact that she drifted a few inches away every time he drew closer, that she only shrugged when he asked her if she had been to the café, that she had said with utter indifference, "Helena might have been," when he exclaimed in disbelief, "You and your wife live on the Island, you can't tell me you haven't been there at least once." Assenting because for all her shows of reluctance and disinterest, she hadn't left him standing alone in another excessively manicured green space wearing his baggy running shorts and a worn but close-fitting Barrington tee. She hadn't said no, and that was all the encouragement he had needed. Her reluctance was even more on display today because she was trying to spot where Laura was without alerting him; she would try to sneak a glance over his shoulder when they relaxed eye contact, sorting out the constantly changing groups of people behind that bulge of muscle so perfectly emphasized by his t-shirt. Laura should be one of those people, anxious to know where he was and which woman he was chatting up.

"Are we going, Myka? I can drive us over there and drive us back here, if you'd like." He was smiling, but it wasn't the wide, easy "Ask me anything about Barrington" grin she was accustomed to seeing. It looked pinched and annoyed, and she could all too readily believe that the voice that went with it would be on the verge of snarling, but not with her, not yet. He hadn't won yet.

"Aren't we going to wait for Laura?" She asked it with as much interest as she had received his invitation.

"I don't see a need. Do you?"

"No." She finally smiled at him in return, a lazy, knowing smile that suggested, just possibly, that her indifference and hesitancy were feigned. It wasn't a smile in her repertoire, it was a variation of one of Helena's, the smile that started at the center of her lips and then seductively moved out to the corners. Let me share a secret with you.

Helena had texted her not long before the race started, just as Myka had been about to bind her phone to her arm. 'I've got your back. Trust me.' Those were words to live by. Myka had snorted and attempted not to think too hard about what Helena might be up to, tucking the phone behind her arm band and putting in her ear plugs. But now that she was about to leave with DeWitt without any assurance that Laura would know where to find them, checking in with Helena - checking in with Christina would be what she would tell DeWitt - might be prudent. Helena would have an idea about how to salvage this latest effort to ensnare DeWitt, not necessarily a good idea, but, Myka acknowledged, it would give her something to work with. As long as it wasn't "Go home with him if he asks you. I'll send Laura to his bedroom with a camera."

Myka's phone buzzed, and she hurriedly ripped it from her arm. Helena must have been anticipating her call. She stared dumbly at the number. Parker. She heard herself saying to DeWitt in a voice so blandly casual she couldn't quite believe it was hers, "Call from home. They must want to know how I finished." A quick smile in apology, which wasn't so difficult to do after that miraculous lead-in by her voice, and then she was strolling a few steps away, catching the call before it went to voicemail. There it was again, that calmness, this time with the faintest hint of surprise, exactly the tone someone would adopt when her spouse was calling her at a moderately inconvenient time. How the hell was she doing this? "Hi. What's going on?"

Parker sputtered for a second or two, caught off-guard by the familiarity of her tone, eventually blurting out, "Is she with you, Helena I mean? Her monitor's gone off. You've been letting me know when you're planning to take her out of range. I've been calling her, but she won't answer."

I've got your back. Trust me. Myka lifted her face to the sun. This Saturday had been so much nicer than the Saturday of the Barrington run. That one had turned gloomy and rainy, and Helena had curled up on her bed in the equal gloom of her bedroom, and they had talked about her betrayal, what it had done to the both of them. And hadn't she been gratified to hear that Helena had suffered too? She opened her eyes. DeWitt was looking at her, not with concern but with that earnestly attentive regard that preceded concern; he would be ready to give her all the concern and all the offers of help she could handle. Like Helena, he had been trained well. "I'm going to have to postpone our lunch. Something's come up at home." God, she sounded so good to herself, composed and ready to handle any home emergency, a blocked toilet, a child running a temperature. If only Pete could listen in, he had always feared that she would collapse, but she wasn't collapsing, because she had known this was going to happen, Helena running off at the first opportunity.

It lacked finesse, Myka thought. There seemed something rushed and clumsy about it. On the other hand, Helena had admitted that she was rusty. And, of course, there was Christina now, it was hard to disappear quietly, smoothly, efficiently when you had to take a four-year-old into account. Myka was walking backward, putting more distance between her and DeWitt, but doing it slowly, as though there wasn't a con artist, another one, who was mocking her once again. "Some other time, okay?" She gave him another smile, a sketch of a wave, and DeWitt responded by raising his shoulders under that chest-hugging tee. Was he reassuring her that it was no big deal, that he wasn't giving up the chase, or was he sloughing her off, letting her know that he had spent all the time and energy he was going to spend on her?

She didn't care. She wouldn't have a job after today. Pete probably wouldn't either. The only thing his bosses would remember was that he was the one who had assigned her, not that they had pushed him to do it. Who better to monitor Helena Wells than the woman she had betrayed? She couldn't be burned a second time.

Parker had never stopped talking. She cut into his worrying that he would be blamed, his vaguely petulant-sounding claims that he had called her as soon as he knew, his defensive comments that it wasn't his fault if she didn't answer the first time. "When and where, Parker?" She still sounded composed but harder, as if her composure were being thinned into an edge. "When did the alert go off and where was she? Where is she now?"

"Um, ten minutes ago. That's when I knew she was outside the boundary. But where? To be honest, we've been having some problems with the tracking software. All I can tell you is the general direction she's headed in, I can't pinpoint her location. She's actually headed east, toward Long Island. That's why I thought she might be with you and that you had forgotten to let anyone know."

LaGuardia. JFK. Problems with the tracking software. "Has IT run any system checks recently?" At Parker's scoffing, she added sharply, "I don't mean the run of the mill, automatic checks. The other ones, Parker, when you're trying to discover whether we've been hacked."

"What? Myka, c'mon, Claudia Donovan's not good enough to get through our firewalls."

"Maybe not. But Joshua Donovan is. Run those checks now." Panic began to infuse Parker's voice. He started firing questions at her as the clicking on his keyboard increased. Should he call Pete about Helena's disappearance? Should he have Steve join her on the Island? "No, just run the checks. We don't know for certain that Helena's gone, maybe her monitor's malfunctioned. There could be an innocent explanation. Let's collect the evidence first."

Still so calm, so rational. Jesus Christ, Parker, you moron, of course she's gone. Helena has fucking left the building. But Myka didn't say, didn't scream any of it. Instead she curtly told him to call her back as soon as he could tell her anything. There was no innocent explanation because that presumed Helena was innocent, and she had stopped being innocent the day Jim Wells had taken away everything he had ever given her. Myka had simply wanted to buy herself some time to think, although there wasn't a thought in her mind to which she could cling. Forcing the phone back under her arm band, she blindly struck out across the perfect lawn toward the perfect parking lot and once beyond that, she would head to the shaded street, not close, where her less-than-perfect car, the mid-sized, economy class sedan Helena had derided, was parked.

Passing groups of runners, some still wearing their bib numbers, Myka remembered how Christina had turned up to her a face streaked with smears of chocolate ice cream and how Christina's mother, grousing about the price of the ice cream that decorated her daughter's face, had nonetheless allowed a smile, ever so slightly smug, to play on her lips. Helena had known how the picture of the family they were presenting, no matter that it was completely fabricated, would work on her. Myka saw now that all her fretting about their performance had had nothing to do with their success or failure in convincing DeWitt and his friends and everything to do with her fear that she would be the one seduced.

Ahead of her were two women having the kind of desultory conversation that always had as its exit line that children or husband or friends were waiting. Laura's friend must have had the royal flush of exit lines, husband  _and_  children, because Myka heard Laura say with the sweetness that only insincerity could command, "Say hi to Adam and the kids for me," before turning and seeing Myka in her path. Something that looked suspiciously like sulkiness hardened her smile and threatened to curdle the sweetness. "I thought you would still be with Bryce." A noticeably whiny concession to the likelihood that she was (temporarily) losing DeWitt to the charms of another - after all, she had been relegated to chatting with an acquaintance instead of hanging on to the arm of her lover - Laura was making it clear that she would be damned if she was going to be a good sport about it.

Myka knew she should send her to DeWitt. Deprived of the prey he had had within his sights, he would be looking for reassurance of his powers, and Laura's jealousy would be more balm than irritant today. Yet she found herself guiding Laura away, toward a corner of the grounds partially screened from view by a few overgroomed trees. "We need to talk about Bryce." Her hand was insistent on Laura's back, and Myka thinned her lips and set her jaw in Law Enforcement Grim; it wasn't hard given the disaster this day was turning out to be. When Laura twisted her head around to protest, she opened her mouth only to close it, and with an abbreviated toss, as if she were signaling to Myka that she could make a fuss if she really wanted to, she twisted her head back to its former direction - straight ahead, toward the trees.

Myka wasn't entirely sure what she was going to say and Laura could reject whatever it was she did say, but without Helena, their plan to worm their way into DeWitt's inner circle wasn't going to work. At least her escape put an end to the ridiculous playacting, the fake Facebook postings, the borrowing of Irene Frederic's car, the charade that she and Helena and Christina were a family. They would catch DeWitt and his confederates the old-fashioned way, trolling available public records, enduring stakeouts, collecting and piecing together evidence until they had enough to support a request for a search warrant, a wiretap. It was what she had wanted from the beginning, good, solid detection, and it's what the team - without her - would go back to, so there was no reason to be pulling Laura away to some relatively private area of Lynley's grounds. There was no reason to be making a further mess of this case, of her career than what Helena's flight had made of it. Stop it, stop it, she shouted at herself, yet she couldn't stop walking and she wouldn't let go of Laura's arm.

She was sitting across from the Marstons again. The room was frigid, but she was sweating. They, of course, were not. They weren't subjecting themselves to another round of questioning so much as they were humoring her. Sitting across the table from them, close enough to pick out the weave of the material in David's suit, she was still too far away from them to touch them. David's smile never left his face, and Hilary, she actually had been swiveling in her chair, as if she were a child waiting for this b-o-o-o-r-i-n-g grown-up to let her go. Myka slowed, her hand dropping from Laura's back. Hilary's arrogance hadn't been without foundation; she hadn't been able to touch them, not because of their skillfulness in defrauding their parents but because of Helena's. Helena had understood that to protect herself she had first to protect the Marstons. She might be a snake, but they were lions. She hadn't made them the fall guy in the event that the FBI were cleverer than she had expected. They could no more arrest the Marstons than they could arrest her.

Was DeWitt being as careful? So far he had been, but his sleeping with his best friend's wife was a risk as was his willingness to flirt with other women in Laura's presence. It wasn't boldness or recklessness that was driving him; he simply didn't care. If he had to end the scam and flee, he wouldn't be taking the Jeffries or the McCrossans or any of the others in their circle with him. Myka felt her Law Enforcement Grim become Law Enforcement Uncertain as she began to worry her bottom lip. Maybe Laura had convinced herself that DeWitt was her true love, that he would save her even if he let the rest of their friends go to jail. Myka more violently chewed her lip. It all depended on whether Laura was a mouse hidden under a lion's skin or a lion through and through.

When Laura stopped and faced her with a huff of impatience, Myka had planted her hands on her hips to stop them from trembling. Her voice, however, was steady, and it was flat with authority, the flatness that announced there was no crack, no gap, no space through which its target could escape. It had everything covered. "We've been putting together a case against Bryce, and we're ready to take him in. Did he approach your husband with his plan to defraud the insurance companies, or did he work on Chris through you? It's one thing to cheat on your husband. It's another to persuade him to commit a crime."

Indignation, disbelief, and fear struggled for dominance over Laura's features before they gave way to a dour satisfaction that had her pursing her lips and wagging her head in a kind of self-rebuke. "I knew there was something off about the two of you, but I couldn't put my finger on it."

Myka had the wild impulse to ask her what had been "off" about her and Helena. Had they been too affectionate (hardly) or not affectionate enough (more likely)? It could have been something more basic, a whiff of the must from her father's bookstore, with its shelves full of never-to-be-sold books, still clinging to her after all these years. In an unguarded moment, Helena's accent might have slipped, and Laura had heard the sound of cheap bedsits instead of old money and country estates. Maybe Christina had failed to impress, her inability to give piano recitals or speak in paragraphs at the age of four revealing that she wasn't a future candidate for Barrington or Lynley. At the possibility that Helena's performance hadn't been sufficiently seamless or that Christina had seemed merely ordinary, Myka felt almost defensive, as if she might burst out with a ringing endorsement of Helena's con artist prowess or stoutly maintain that she would be just as happy if Christina became an elementary school teacher instead of a CEO. It was madness to feel that she needed to protect them. Probably at this very moment, Helena, Jemma, and Christina were in a car with Nate Burdette racing to his private plane, Helena trying to work her ankle monitor off her leg while Jemma inspected their new, authentic-looking passports. But knowing something like that very scenario was unfolding didn't make the protectiveness go away.

With another wag of her head that had artfully groomed strands of blond hair shimmying over her shoulders, Laura said, "If you really had him, you wouldn't be here, you know, certainly not sweating through a 10K."

Apparently Law Enforcement Grim hadn't scared her enough, and Laura was calling her bluff. Myka wondered if her mother would let her move into the two-bedroom crackerbox her parents had bought after they sold the bookstore. After her mother sold it, rather. Her father's impatience had been defanged by Alzheimer's, but the inability to concentrate that had replaced it was no greater help in closing a sale than growling at the real estate agent would have been. Maybe letting her move back in would be more appealing if she offered to look after her father, assume the caregiver role that had fallen to Tracy; she would have to fill her days with something. Myka brought her attention back to Laura and why she had dragged her behind the thin border of trees. "Either way you lose him. If you tell him that the feds are on to him, he's going to disappear - without you. If we can't bring him in, you still lose him." Laura was listening, although she had crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head at a skeptical angle. "He doesn't love you, but it's not because he's looking for someone better. He can't love. It's all a game to him, a power play. I bet when you met him you looked at him the way you're looking at me now, and he couldn't stand it. Think back. The ones in your little group who seemed the least won over, he worked the hardest to charm them, didn't he? Remember why you didn't like him and ask yourself what changed."

Unfolding her arms, Laura adopted an expression that could be called pitying . . . or contemptuous. "I don't have any illusions about Bryce. What should I call you? Officer Bering? Agent Bering? I have no illusions about him, Agent Bering," she repeated. She turned to scan the grounds behind her. "I'm sure he's taking this opportunity with neither one of us around to flirt with a pretty girl." She had said it casually, but she twitched her shoulders as if the acknowledgment's sting were sharper than she had expected.

"If you can accept that he's just using you, then you're a stronger person than I was," Myka said softly. "When he leaves, he'll do it quickly, Laura, and he'll make sure he does it when it's the last thing that you expected him to do. He'll leave you and Chris, Alex and Charlotte, Meredith, all of you to answer for everything he's done." She looked absently at the ground, her foot sweeping across the grass like a metronome, setting a rhythm for her thoughts to follow. "She had a year lease on her loft and her studio; eight months were left on both when she took off. The landlords came after me, but my name wasn't on the leases. I never had to pay them a cent, but they were tenacious. She left behind everything, her car, her furniture, her clothes, things we had bought together, things she'd said she couldn't live without. We'd been planning to take a trip to the Caribbean. She had known she'd be leaving long before we would take that trip, but she encouraged me to make the hotel reservations and buy the plane tickets." Myka looked up from the arc of grass she had bent first one way and then the other and searched Laura's face. She wasn't sure what she was hoping for, not sympathy, not that at all, but she knew she shouldn't be expecting recognition or a dawning awareness either. Yet Laura hadn't left her talking to herself behind the trees, and that was something. "She didn't con me out of money or con me into committing a crime. She had needed a cover, and I was it." Not exactly true but close enough. "What Bryce had you do for him, it's bad, Laura, and he knows it. He'll take advantage of it. He's going to leave behind not only his job and his town home and all that's in it, but everything that can connect you and Chris and anyone else to the fraud."

Myka smiled, but she didn't mean for it to be a comforting one. Had she liked Laura better, she might have felt sorry for what she was going to say next. "We'll look for him, but those kinds of searches take money and time and a lot agents. You'll be right here, you and Chris and everyone else he'll have managed to implicate before he leaves. You're not going anywhere. You have expensive homes, expensive kids, companies to run and charities to support. You can't leave at a moment's notice." She leaned in, eyes boring unblinkingly into Laura's. "Ever wonder why the most expensive thing Bryce has is a fast car? I used to wonder why my girlfriend never really furnished her loft." Myka paused. "I learned." She said it with a finality that she hoped Laura wouldn't question because she had nothing more. She knew that what little the team had put together, the minor inroads she and Helena had made into the circle of DeWitt's friends she had just ruined. Her weapons of last resort had been bluster and her own hard luck story. Myka had never thought she would arrive at a place where her father and Helena would meet, where the berating and threats of the one would commingle with the emotional manipulation of the other, yet here she was combining the two who had shaped her. "We're going to take someone down for this. Don't make us come after you because we can't get him."

"Is she why you became an agent, Myka? Is this all payback for her hurting you?" Myka wanted to wince at the sarcasm, but she fought to keep her expression neutral, no matter that she could hear the roar of the fire destroying their case. Telling Laura that she had already been an agent when Helena conned her probably wouldn't help her credibility or the agency's.

"No." She needed to get moving again and attend to her other, bigger disaster. Laura, too, was getting restless, her movements multiplying; her fingers were going to her hair, her glances were flicking around their visitor-less corner of the grounds; she was about to leave her in search of DeWitt. "I don't work white collar crimes because I get a thrill out of capturing predators. I do it because I don't like a con artist's vision of the world. They see only winners and losers, grifters and their marks." I want a world in which I'm not a snake or a mouse but a dolphin. She almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought, but it rung strangely true. "This isn't about the world I see, it's about Bryce's, and in his you're a predator or you're prey. You have 48 hours to choose which you're going to be. Then we're coming after all of you."

_Helena had been throwing up in the mornings. At first she hadn't noticed because it wasn't uncommon for Helena to get up in the middle of the night or right before dawn and pad around the loft eating saltines or sketching an image that had visited her in her dreams. Better she did that than adjust her pillow a million times or flop first on her right side and then on her left, right side, left side, right side, endlessly. Myka hadn't minded it when Helena would expend some of her nighttime restlessness whispering in her ear "I love you," but she hadn't done that in a while, and Myka hadn't seen as many saltine crumbs on the floor lately. What she heard now was the dull thump of the toilet seat hitting the tank and Helena retching._

_Myka searched for her phone under the bed, Helena not believing in nightstands or alarm clocks to put on nightstands she didn't have. Her phone glowed 5:45 a.m. She wouldn't have gotten up that much later anyway. The bathroom door opened, and Helena peered at her through the gloom. "I'm sorry if I woke you up."_

" _It doesn't hurt to go in early. I've got stacks of case files to work through." Myka shivered in her pajamas and reached for the robe that was draped across the end of the bed. The loft was always cool, regardless of the season or time of day. Her toes were curling in shock from contact with the floor, and she extended a foot underneath the bed in search of her slippers. "Maybe you ought to see a doctor," she suggested gently. "Unless you're afraid to tell me that you're knocked up." She giggled a little as she said it._

_She thought she could see Helena's eyes bulge and a moment later came a vehement "God, no, it's not that." Her voice softening, Helena said, "Just nerves. It's a big restoration project I'm starting. So many things could go wrong with it." The quick slap of feet on wood and then Helena's arms were around her, one icy sole seeking warmth from the top of Myka's foot. "It'll be two weeks initially, and if the first part goes well, the time frame could be much, much longer." She tucked her head into Myka's neck; her nose was cold but her breath was warm. "How will I survive without you?" She had said it jokingly, but Myka heard a plaintive note._

" _I don't know," she said, stroking Helena's back. "But after it's over, we're going to St. Thomas. Hotel, flights, I've got it all done, and once we're there, you can start making it up to me."_

" _Yes," Helena murmured, pressing herself against Myka in an invitation to be held more tightly. "I'll make everything up to you then."_

Only after dint of much scanning and comparing of interiors (amazing what cluttered people's dashboards) could Myka pick out her car among the other nondescript mid-range sedans parked along the street. Either the Lynley 10K had attracted a fair number of participants who were in search of race events or else the rich really were misers. She didn't realize until she removed her phone from the band that she had turned it off. She didn't especially want to turn it back on, but she needed to check in with Parker and find out what he had discovered. As the number of missed calls began to multiply on the screen, she saw that very few were from Parker, in fact, only one, the most recent. The other numbers, which were all the same, she didn't recognize. Apparently the caller had tried to reach her several times before leaving a voicemail and then had continued to call. She pressed the voicemail button, dreading whose voice it might be. Parker might have calmed down and realized what shit sge had been talking and gone over her head. This wouldn't be Pete, but maybe Pete's boss.

At first Myka heard only background noise, children crying and what sounded like the buzz of voices over intercoms or some kind of public address system. Then she heard Helena, her voice strained and halting with the effort to sound composed. "I know I've gone AWOL, but Christina's been in an accident, and I'm at the hospital." Helena's voice became muffled. "What's the name of the hospital, Mum?" A sudden blare as it regained volume. "EverCare or something like that." A brief laugh devoid of humor. "Not all that far from the Lynley School, strangely. I would've called sooner, but my phone died, and Irene forgot hers in the hurry to get me here . . . I'm talking to you on Jemma's phone, but it probably won't last much longer either. Christina's . . . she's okay for now, I think. The doctors will tell us more . . . I'll call you later. I just wanted to let you know . . . 'cause you're thinking the worst. But it's not true. I wouldn't do that again . . . ." Her voice trailed off and the call ended.

Mechanically Myka listened to the voicemail that Parker had left her. "I don't know how she reached me, but that Mrs. Frederic that Helena lives with? She called to let me know there was some emergency, something to do with Helena's kid and they just took off for the hospital without letting anybody know. I don't know what you're going to do about it, but I'm going to shut off all the alarms, so to speak."

She was going to sag against her car in relief, but it actually wasn't her car whose hood she was about to sit on. Her car was another two cars down. She stumbled towards it, pressing Parker's number. Helena hadn't burned her, but she had managed to send the insurance fraud case up in smoke at just the thought of it. For one second, however, she could pretend to be a competent agent. "Parker?"

"Hey, Myka, did you get my message? She's not on the loose." Parker was eating, potato chips or something that crunched. He stress ate, she demolished her cases.

"Did you finish that check to see if we had been hacked?"

"No, there's no need -"

"Finish it, and keep doing it every fucking day until I tell you to stop."

"Myka." She imagined a cloud of potato chip crumbs hanging in the air after his aggrieved exhalation. "There are automatic scans all the time. The kind of check you want me to do is labor intensive and it takes time away from other things. Really, we don't -"

"Do it. If you want to make an issue out of it, bring it up with Pete. And the tracking software glitch? Get it fixed." She rubbed her hand over her face. "Sorry, I know I'm sounding like a bitch, but we were lucky this time. She'll remember this, Parker. She won't think of it now but she will later, and she'll wonder why there weren't agents intercepting her in the parking lot." She held up her hand, knowing he couldn't see it. "Yeah, I know, I was the one who told you not to call anybody else. So the next time something seems off, always call Pete or Steve in addition to me."

"I get it." He didn't sound annoyed or defensive; instead, he sounded . . . sympathetic. "Don't beat yourself up over this, Myka. We'll do better."

Christ, that was even worse. She did not need an IT jockey, even an extremely bright IT jockey, feeling sorry for her. She threw her phone onto the passenger seat and sat in her car for a few minutes before starting it. She should call Pete; better yet, she should drive to his tract home in the New Jersey suburbs and talk to him face to face. He needed to know about Helena, and he sure as hell needed to know what she had done to the investigation of DeWitt. Before she did that, however, she needed to go home and shower.

It was what the old Myka would have done. Not the Myka she had been before ending up on Helena's bed, holding her, but an even older Myka. The Myka who existed before Helena Wells entered her life because there had never been a time since then when Helena hadn't trumped the agent in her. Never a time when she wouldn't trump the agent. She didn't need to look for directions on her phone; she had passed signs for the hospital on the way to Lynley. Maybe she could make a career out of that memory of hers. She would surrender her badge, get the hell out of Dodge, and make a new life for herself in some New England hamlet. She would put that memory to use in a library, buy a cat, live alone. When she died, she would be that "crazy old library lady" to the kids, to their parents, just another elderly woman of limited means and a corresponding frugality. By the time she was riding the elevator to the children's wing of the hospital, she had already decorated her modest one-bedroom apartment in this imaginary hamlet and named her cat. Nigel.

The apartment dissolved and Nigel faded away when she saw Christina looking especially small in her hospital bed. A gauze pad covered the skin above her right eyebrow and her right arm was in a sling. She brightened upon seeing Myka. "Hi, Myka-Myka. Did you come to see my hurts? My arm hurt really bad but it's better now." She sounded disappointed at the development, as if on the hurts scale she had lost a position or two.

Helena, who had been sitting at the side of the bed, whirled around and leapt from her chair. She stood tensely for a second and then she covered the room in two, almost running, strides and wrapped herself around Myka. Myka held her, whispering the jumble of sounds and nonwords she might have whispered to Christina. She stroked Helena's back in the old way, the way she used to do when she hoped to relax her, and said over Helena's shoulder, "Sure did, and I want to hear how brave you were, too."

"I was very brave," Christina said after due consideration. "Nonni and Mommy said I was." She paused, digging her left fist into her eye and letting out a huge yawn. "Mommy said we were going to have a sleepover here tonight, her and Nonni and me. Are you going to stay here with us?"

"There's no place I'd rather be." 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Myka's and Helena's troubles multiply, but the day isn't without a few good moments. Some strong language and a flashback with sexual content.

It had happened at a playground. Jemma liked to take Christina to parks for some unstructured play time - "I keep a sharp eye on her, mind you," she had told Myka and then, looking down and away, the fair complexion mottling, she had amended, "that is, I did until today." She didn't believe that Christina's "fancy dancy" preschool was hospitable to a point of view holding that she could learn the same social skills and good behaviors from romping on playground equipment with children who hadn't been previously vetted for her as she could from structured activities and playmates about whom everything was known, from their food allergies to their parents' annual incomes. Christina took to it like a duck to water, Jemma had averred, displaying a gift for gab and for instantly making friends that her grandfather would have delighted in - and tried to profit from, she had added sardonically. This morning had been no different, with Christina running from the swing set to the slide and back again with four or five other little boys and girls.

"Everything's so safe now," Jemma had said sadly, as if she were unsure the development was a wholly good one, "no sharp edges, no rusty metal, all the danger engineered away, or so they like you to think, but you know children, one moment they're hugging each other and the next, they're pulling each other's hair and giving out nasty pinches. A tussle broke out between Christina and one of the children at the top of the slide about who would get to go down first - she's sweet as sugar, but she can be a mite bossy - and he must've pushed her. I saw them arguing out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't think anything of it. It would blow over as quickly as it started. But the water fountain was put too close, and though it's not much of a drop, if you fall a certain way you can catch its base . . . ." She had glanced at the hospital bed; both Christina and Helena were asleep, Helena half-sitting in her chair, half-sprawled on the bed, an arm draped across her daughter's middle. "I thought for sure Helena would look murder at me and order me out of her sight, but she hasn't blamed me. In fact, she's hugged me more this one afternoon than she has her whole life."

"Everyone needs her mom at times, even Helena." Myka had wrapped her arm around Jemma's shoulders and given them a quick squeeze, although she wasn't much of a hugger herself. Her family hadn't been demonstrative, not when it came to affection. Her father, as yet another sign that he was no longer the Warren Bering she knew, would hug her of his own volition, which, when it didn't actually scare the hell of her (because he would swoop down on her from out of nowhere) tended to creep her out. As for her mother, she used lukewarm hugs and kisses, as well as lukewarm inquiries about Myka's job and friends, to passively express her resentment about the months that would pass between her daughter's visits.

"The big one and the little one over there, they need you, too. I'm glad you're here, Myka." Jemma's smile, combining impishness with affection, was one Myka frequently saw on Christina and, years ago, had basked in when Helena had turned it on her. Until now, she never would have thought to seek its origin in Jemma. "I think I'll take the opportunity to stretch my legs for a bit. You don't mind, do you?"

That had been almost an hour ago. It was going on six, and as her stomach cramped, Myka realized she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Not of substance - she vaguely remembered sharing a bag of Gardetto's, or maybe it was Chex Mix, with Jemma earlier in the afternoon. She should go home and change, shower and change, she amended, and buy something for her and Helena and Jemma that could pass for dinner. Christina would be the recipient of a nutritionally balanced children's meal off the hospital's menu, which Myka thought deserved an off-menu, completely nutritionless dessert. She would add that to the list. Somewhere in there she would need to tell Pete that she had royally screwed up the insurance fraud investigation. She would need to tell Helena as well; if nothing else, it would take her mind off Christina for a little while. She smiled wryly at the thought.

"What's so amusing?" Helena asked quietly, pushing herself off the bed with care and then sinking bonelessly into the Mommy recliner, which had been dragged as close to the bed as she could get it. She was curled against the cushions as if she had drawn upon the last stores of her energy to shift the upper half of her body from bed to chair.

"Nothing." Myka pulled out her phone from the space between the cushion and arm of the visitor's chair she was in. Helena's Mommy recliner looked more comfortable; it was bigger, anyway. Catching a whiff of her own sweat, she prodded herself to go home. If she wouldn't do it for herself, she could spare Helena and Christina the odor. On the other hand, she could probably take a couple of hospital-issued Wet Wipes and wash her armpits in the bathroom. Gazing at Christina as she slept and then at Helena as she distractedly pushed her hair back from her face before doing the same, with a feather-light touch, for Christina, Myka knew she didn't want to go anywhere.

She looked at a string of texts from Sam and wearily scrubbed at her forehead. Tonight they were supposed to go out to dinner. He had said it was because he was tired of them eating each other's cold take-out. They would go to a nice place with linen tablecloths and an expensive wine list that suggested their meals might be actually be cooked instead of warmed in a microwave and dished into take-out containers. But Myka knew it was because of the crescents in his back marking where she had dug in her fingernails and the areas of irritated skin on his chest, which she had, not gently, worried between her teeth. They had convinced him that her ferocity in bed meant something about him, about the strength of her feelings for him. It did, to the extent that she had clutched at him all the harder, not from a wish that he were someone else, but from wishing that she were, someone who could get it right with him this time, someone who didn't ache to get it wrong all over again with someone like Helena Wells. His last text was asking her if they should meet at the restaurant or if she preferred him to play the gentleman and pick her up in half an hour.

"If you have somewhere you need to go, go," Helena said. "We'll be fine. The doctors said they think Christina can be released tomorrow, although I'm sure she'll be fighting the sling." She fondly looked down at her daughter, and when she looked back up, the fondness was still there. Myka checked an impulse to glance behind her. Jemma hadn't returned yet, the fondness was for her.

"Christina wants a sleepover. I'd hate to disappoint her," Myka said lightly, feeling, in the warmth of Helena's gaze, how natural it had been to let Helena fly into her arms and then, as Helena had clung to her, to start caressing that tensely arched back. Of the many things about their relationship that Myka had diligently put out of her mind over the past eight years was the satisfaction she had taken in being able to comfort her; it had been a rare occasion when Helena felt the need to lean on her. She had never wanted to appear as anything less than self-sufficient, a desire with which Myka was all too familiar, and at those odd moments when Helena would confess that she was overwhelmed and ask Myka to hold her, it was with the headiest mixture of love, possessiveness, and more than a little triumph that Myka did so. She had experienced the same rush of emotions when she had held Helena earlier, and Myka had had to ask herself as her hands automatically started drawing their old patterns on Helena's back if Helena hadn't known all those years ago exactly how and when to falter, understanding better than she did herself her desire to be the strong one.

"As you have a habit of telling me, she's four. She won't remember. And I can hardly abscond with her now, can I?" Helena drew her legs up into the chair and folded them to her chest. "Make no mistake, I want you to stay. But I'm trying, very hard I'll have you know, to play fair. I accept that the Neanderthal might take a dim view of you spending a Saturday night trying to jolly a child with a broken collarbone." Sometimes when Helena would draw up one or both of her knees, it was because she was relaxed; at other times, it was a defensive gesture, as if she thought making herself as small as possible would make her less of a target. Helena was tired, but she wasn't relaxed; she was wrapping her arms around her knees because she didn't want to hear about Sam.

For the sake of the investigation, for the sake of her job, Myka knew there were things she ought to have done hours ago, such as informing Pete that she had blown her and Helena's cover to Laura Jeffries. For the sake of her sanity, Myka knew that she ought to take the out Helena was offering her and tell her that she was leaving to meet Sam for dinner - and that she wouldn't be returning until tomorrow morning, about the time the doctors would be releasing Christina. To stay would be as good as admitting that there was no place she would rather be, no one she would rather be with. To stay would be as good as admitting that, despite Helena's taking shelter in her arms a few hours ago, she was the weak one.

One of the nurses entered, forestalling a response. He checked Christina's IV feed and the readings on the monitors clustered around the head of her bed, all of which were quietly clicking or blinking. Myka envisioned that, a century and more ago, a team of doctors would have stood in place of the monitors, going through their own clicking and blinking as they attempted, with their crude diagnostics, to determine how serious Christina's injuries were, whereas the nurse, a pudgy man in his 40s, said with a nonchalant confidence, "She's looking good, your little girl" to the both of them. Christina began to stir, whimpering, as the nurse left, and looked blearily at Myka. "You and Mommy have to get into 'jamas for our sleepover."

How else could she respond other than to say that she was going to leave right now to get their pajamas? Helena's smile was bright and she loosened the lock she had on her legs, allowing one to extend and point its foot, almost playfully, at Myka. She brushed aside Myka's idea of picking up something for dinner - they could order off the hospital menu for a fee - but she wasn't averse to her bringing back something sweet, cookies or cupcakes, anything really, so long as it wasn't Twizzlers. "We can talk about the Lynley event and DeWitt later," Helena added. "I haven't forgotten about it."

Myka jerked her head in something that could be taken for a nod but was more a reflexive gesture of her dismay that she couldn't go on not mentioning it. In the parking lot, she called Sam, making her voice more curt than necessary when he answered. He listened to her explanation, and she was embarrassed and defensive both that it didn't pretend to offer an apology or admit to disappointment. It was saying everything in its brevity and refusal to allow him an opening that she hadn't had the courage to say to him outright. He was silent after she finished and then he asked, "Did you even think to call Steve, to see if he would be willing to stay with her? As I recall, you both pull guard duty with her."

"This isn't a ruse, Sam. She's not going anywhere."

"You're not answering my question, so let me rephrase it. Are you willing to call him now?"

"It's unnecessary," she said flatly. She thought about telling him that she was the one with whom Christina had bonded, that having Steve show up in her hospital room was yet one more unexpected development in a day that had already turned out pretty crappy for a four-year-old, but they were just excuses, and he would know it.

"Okay," he said, his patience clearly strained. "Do you want me to try to change the reservation to tomorrow night or a night later next week?"

He was pushing her now. She didn't want to have the conversation that this was turning out to be over the phone, and she didn't want to have it standing in a parking lot. "You should cancel the reservation, but I don't want to go into this over the phone." It was a crummy kind of honesty, but its inadequacy fit in with everything else she had done today.

"We need to talk, Myka. Plan on me dropping by your place tomorrow so we can discuss just what the hell is going on." He ended the call, no longer Sam, her ex-husband and current bed partner, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Martino, and she had a good idea of what tomorrow's conversation would be about. Her loss of objectivity, her apparent vulnerability to Helena's emotional manipulation, and, if he were angry enough or sufficiently worried about the continued viability of their plan to ensnare Burdette, her loyalty to the agency. She wondered what would upset him the most, a confession that she had slept with Helena or the threat such a confession would pose to their capturing Burdette. That it remained a question, how much he cared, was possibly more disappointing than the answer itself. They had known each other for more than ten years, she and Sam, almost as long as she had known Pete, and yet nothing had changed between them. She could still be the junior agent, hoping that her on-again-off-again relationship with a driven attorney in Justice might develop into something, yet utterly clueless about what she needed to do to make that happen. Of course, when she had dropped by Helena Wells's studio one Saturday afternoon, she discovered exactly what it was she and Sam had been lacking.

_He was sitting at her apartment door, looking down at his phone, his thumb lightly rubbing the keypad. He tilted his head up as she approached, and though she saw relief in his face, she also saw anger. "It's almost nine o'clock. I've been here since six, pounding on your door, calling your phone, trying to get hold of your super."_

_Nervously she ran her hand through her hair, smelling herself and Helena on her fingers. Great. "I've been out," she said, realizing how sullen she sounded. Then she stood up a little taller in her coat, in the stretched-out pullover that was even more stretched out because of the countless times she, or Helena, had been yanking it off, in her jeans which smelled of Helena, too, because Helena, sounding drugged or drunk, but from exhaustion not alcohol, had said she was going to mark her, "because you're mine now," and then proceeded to rub herself all over the denim, which had led to their yanking off her jeans, more than once. "We didn't have plans this weekend. You told me some of your college buddies were visiting."_

" _They went home. I thought you might want to pick up something to eat." Sam pushed himself off the grimy carpet. "You look like you've been on a binge."_

_Of fucking, yes. She didn't want to say it like that, of course, but she needed to say something, because what had happened between her and Helena over the past two days, it changed everything. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that nothing had looked the same to her when she had emerged from Helena's loft, the subway station, the train, the street she lived on, familiar but somehow foreign too, like she had last taken the subway, last been to her apartment years ago, having moved somewhere else, to someplace else, without even being aware of it. The only reality that counted, she recognized, was the one that she and Helena had created. She couldn't tell him all that either, but whatever she managed to say, however awkward it was, it shouldn't be said out here, as though he were nothing more than a man she had dated once or twice, an acquaintance who had developed an inconvenient crush on her._

_But being inside didn't make it much easier. She turned on the lights, asked if he wanted a glass of water or a beer (though she wasn't sure she had any), while he didn't move away from the door, hands now jammed deep into his jeans' pockets. She knew it was turning weirder, their being together this way, standing so uncomfortably in her apartment, the discomfort the only thing they were sharing. So, swallowing with effort and leaning against the counter, her own hands jammed deep into her jeans' pockets, Myka said, "I've been with someone this weekend." As he simply looked at her, not responding, she wincingly added, so there could be no mistake, "I mean, sleeping with someone. That's where I've been."_

" _Um, is this the first time, or has this been going on for a while?"_

_She wasn't sure why he wanted to know. They hadn't been exclusive, which had been one of Sam's few ground rules, not because he had other women lined up, he had explained with a self-deprecating laugh, he just wasn't ready to be tied down. "We hadn't . . . I mean . . . it was the first time," she finished in rush._

_He worked his shoulders, as if he were physically trying to shrug something off, before moving away from the door into the kitchen. He was steadily meeting her eyes, which made her all the more eager to look away. "I know I haven't been around much for you. I've let the job take over, and this weekend, how I handled it was stupid. I should've asked you if you wanted to meet them, they wanted to meet you."_

_He thought it was about him. For a few hours, after she and Helena walked to her loft, arms slung around each other's waists and tongues out trying to catch the snowflakes that were falling, a poor substitute, they had laughed, for what they really wanted their tongues to be doing, she had thought it might be about him. It was easier to think that when she was wearing clothes, when Helena wasn't naked next to her, when they were sitting across from each other at Helena's enormous, trestle-like table, eating pizza and drinking wine. She would get up from that table, thank Helena for the great sex, and go home, but when she put her wine glass down, she didn't head toward the door. She went over to Helena's side of the table and straddled her, unbuttoning her paint-splattered workshirt and cupping breasts that were already being arched into her hands. And Helena had asked her, "Is this about us or is this about that neglectful boyfriend of yours?" She hissed as Myka sucked at a nipple._

_Myka leaned back, her fingertips taking the place of her tongue. "Mmmm, I thought you said I belonged to you, and now you're saying it's all right if I'm doing this to get back at him."_

_Helena smiled, but the look she gave Myka was less confident. "I'm prone to bold talk; it's genetic, you know. But none of this has to mean anything, especially if you love him."_

_Then Myka said the three things she knew, in that moment, were true. "I don't love him. I don't know if I'm falling in love with you instead, but I do know I want to be here, with you, and nowhere else."_

" _Get up." The words had sounded so compressed, so hard, that Myka feared that everything she knew was true was also everything that it had been a mistake to say. She, not nimbly, not gracefully, slid off Helena, and stood, silent, not breathing, as Helena rose from the bench. But she didn't escort Myka to the door, she pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her jeans, and she began pushing their dishes and half-eaten pizza to the other end of the table. Myka was no longer holding her breath, but she wasn't breathing any more easily, and when Helena sat, legs parted, on the end of the table and then slowly leaned back, Myka could hear her breath coming in short, uneven bursts, like she was panting. She was panting. "Show me how much you want me," Helena commanded, but her voice was trembling. "Show me that no one's wanted me as much as you do."_

_Jesus Christ, she could come, in front of Sam, just thinking about it. Myka squeezed her eyes shut then rapidly blinked them open, trying to drive out the memory for the time it took to get Sam out of her apartment. Then she would relive what she and Helena did on that big table of hers over and over. "It doesn't matter now," she said quietly. "I can't see you anymore, Sam. What happened, it's different, and I can't see you anymore," she helplessly repeated._

" _What? You're all of a sudden in love with this guy?" Sam seemed more surprised than angry._

_She wasn't going to correct him, but she wasn't going to tell him more. The rest of it was hers and Helena's, and she wasn't going to share it. "I don't know, I just know that I can't see you."_

She could have called Pete once she returned to her apartment, but she lost sight of the necessity of it among the other necessities on the list she had drawn up in her mind, necessities like collecting an assortment of light cotton lounge pants and tops that might serve as pajamas for her and Helena, reveling for a few extra minutes in a hot shower and pretending that the water sluicing over her head and back was also carrying away all the problems she had managed to create for herself over the course of the day, and gulping down a hastily microwaved meal because she was never going to make it back to the hospital before its kitchens closed for the evening or before Christina would have fallen asleep waiting for her sleepover to begin. She would talk to Pete tomorrow when she had to step back into time, when the enormity of her mistakes in saying what she had to Laura Jeffries, in holding Helena as she had, in giving Sam cause, more than cause, to believe that her loyalty was compromised would be no less enormous but more manageable, seemingly, because her fuck-ups had happened yesterday, and everything looked a little better, a little more human-sized the next morning. Even Helena's betrayal had assumed more normal dimensions, although it had taken only some 2,900 mornings for it to happen.

Myka was unused to procrastinating, and having decided to commit to it, she forlornly wished that she were enjoying it more, but she left her apartment, showered and carrying an overnight bag packed with "pajamas" that she and Helena probably wouldn't wear, without talking herself into searching her shoulder bag for her phone so she could call Pete. She made better time than she expected, even taking into account her stopping at a grocery store for chocolate chip cookies and mini cupcakes, but as she neared Christina's room, feeling an unexpected - and wholly inappropriate - surge of happiness, she saw Helena standing outside it, her face taut with anger, arguing with two men. One looked like Ben Winslow, and Myka stiffened, feeling her happiness turn into something familiarly grim and unyielding, and she knew the day's grievous errors weren't over.

Although the opinion she had formed about Ben Winslow was based on little more than his ongoing battle to wrest custody of Christina away from Jemma and his not unrelated tendency to treat her as a spoil of war, enjoyed only to be subsequently forgotten, or so Jemma grumbled, Myka didn't find it improving as he crowded Helena against the wall. In what would have been melodramatic excess had he been someone other than a Winslow, he was threatening her that she would never see their daughter again. The other man had put a restraining hand on Winslow's arm, but he wasn't actively trying to restrain him; his billable hours for a week probably equaled Myka's salary, but he was, in the end, only another Winslow lackey. Dropping her bags and wishing she were wearing something that shouted "formidable federal agent" rather than faded jeans and an ancient linen shirt, Myka clamped her hand on Winslow's shoulder and pushed him away from Helena as she interposed herself between them.

"Step back," she said coolly but implacably. As he raised his arm to brush hers away, she squeezed his shoulder harder, noting with satisfaction that it was narrower than her own. "I said, step back."

With Myka as the new focus of Winslow's anger and contempt, the other man suddenly became more assertive about pulling Winslow towards him. "This is a private conversation, Ms. -"

"Agent," Myka said, "Agent Bering."

Winslow demanded, "I thought you were supposed to keep her away from Christina. Where the hell were you? How could you let her and her screwy mother hurt my kid?" He shook free of the other man's grip and thrust his chest at her, trying to press her against Helena.

Myka could hear Christina crying fretfully to Jemma, "Where's Mommy? Where's My-ka?" Then the cries became tearful in earnest. "I hurt, Nonni. Where's Mommy?" While her weeping had Helena restlessly gesturing toward the room and pleading, "Ben, can we put this aside for now? I need to go to her," it further enraged him. The color in his face deepened to the choleric red of the put-upon fathers and bosses in the Sunday comics, which Myka would have found amusing if she didn't think Winslow's next move would be to lunge at the both of them. He was sweating, though the hospital's air conditioning kept the temperature only a degree or two above that of a meat locker, and his hands were trembling as he worked his fingers, as if he were unsure whether he wanted to clench them into fists or select one to shake in their faces.

"Helena, why don't you go comfort Christina while I talk to her father?"

"Myka," she protested.

"Go." Myka spoke just as coolly and implacably to Helena as she had to Winslow. He was on the verge of erupting, and if she couldn't persuade him to exercise some self-control, she wanted Helena a safe distance away. While the corridor was virtually deserted, a nurse pushing a cart out of a nearby room was eyeing the four of them with a trepidation that told Myka a call to the hospital's security staff was only moments away. "All we're doing right now is agitating Christina. If she sees Helena, she'll calm down, and I think we can all agree that we don't want her feeling any more miserable than she already does." Myka tried to express a patience and a reasonableness she didn't particularly feel, but the look she fixed on him was hard. As Helena brushed against her back, Myka felt her hand gently rub her spine; Winslow watched them, but he didn't object to Helena's leaving.

Christina's crying, which had begun to crescendo, trailed off to whimpers and Myka heard her saying with the vexation that only a child could fully give vent to, "Mommy, I called and called for you." A part of Myka wanted to grin at Christina's continuing chastisement of her mother, but there was no telling how Winslow would interpret it. It would be her luck that he would take her grin as additional provocation, and the last thing she needed to have happen was to be ejected from the hospital. Winslow was matching her stare, but his hands had stopped twitching, although the tremors had reappeared around his mouth.

As flushed and sweaty and unprepossessing as he was at this moment, the tic at the corner of his lips undermining the sneer he was attempting to curl them into, Myka couldn't deny that he was Christina's father. She had her mother's hair, her mother's eyes and nose, her grandmother's smile, but the pointed chin that gave her such an appealingly elfin look was Ben Winslow's, the slight peak to her ears - which only enhanced the suggestion that she was a sprite - and how closely they were set to her head, that was from Winslow, too. The line of Christina's eyebrows, the slightness of her frame (though she had her mother's deceptive solidity), those were her father's as well. Myka had marked the resemblance before in the picture of Winslow and his wife with Christina that Sam had used to goad Helena during their prison visit, but it was a different experience to see the features they shared working in concert. It didn't just make the resemblance stronger, it emphasized that Christina belonged to Winslow and Helena, no matter how much they despised each other; they were the unit that she and Helena and Christina pretended to be on Sunday afternoons.

What she resented with an intensity that unsettled her wasn't the fact that, biologically, she and Helena could never share Christina - that fact was inescapable no matter how many children they might have raised together in that alternate, parallel life she could see and hear but never inhabit - but that Christina wasn't their choice, her and Helena's together. They hadn't thought about her, dreamed of what she would be like before she was conceived; they hadn't joked about who would be the disciplinarian and who would be the pushover, who would learn how to cook her favorite foods (cook, period) and who would drive her to her appointments. Winslow and Helena might have conceived Christina in a spontaneous coupling that each almost immediately regretted, but that brief union had happened without Myka knowing about it or consenting to it, and, as absurdly retroactive as her resentment was, she resented it. Not just because she didn't like Winslow and didn't want him to have any claim to Helena or Christina, but because she didn't want anyone to have a claim to them. Helena and Christina should have always been hers, as they would have been had everything happened differently . . . .

Winslow's voice was growing louder. He had been talking to, no, shouting at her, and she had let her own anger block him out. "And my attorney is going to roust that goddamn family court judge from his dinner party or poker night and have him grant full custody of Christina to me, as he should've done in the first place. Christ knows why he thought that senile old woman could provide her with 'needed stability.' She's the reason my daughter's here now. How the hell is that giving Christina stability?" The withering contempt would have been more persuasive if Winslow didn't have spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth like so much froth. Yes, if only the family court judge could see what an exemplar of stability he was. Winslow looked over his shoulder at his attorney. "Howard, you've got Judge Miller's number. Call him, I'm not waiting any longer."

Howard rubbed his chin meditatively and tried to reason with his client. "Ben, I don't think this is a good time to get Judge Miller on the line. There's nothing he's going to do until Monday. Look, Christina is getting the care she needs, and Helena's back on a leash. Go home, take care of your wife and son."

"I didn't ask for your opinion, Howard. I told you to do something, and if Judge Miller doesn't like getting a call from a Winslow on a Saturday night, ask him how much he'll like facing a Winslow in a Congressional hearing about family court practices when it comes to granting custody to the mother of a fucking felon." Winslow had turned his head around and glared at Myka as he dressed down his attorney. Apparently Howard didn't merit even a look from his client as he was being scolded, but if Howard felt the insult, his expression didn't reveal it. All Myka saw were patience and concern . . . and anxiety. It wasn't Winslow's ridiculous threats against the continuation of Miller's career that had the attorney's restraining hand hovering near Winslow's elbow again. "She didn't even have the guts to tell me . . . I had to hear it from one of you, some agent in a suit." He took a step forward. "I hadn't the faintest fucking idea . . . but you know what? It doesn't matter because I'm going to screw her just like she screwed me. By the time I'm through with Helena Wells, she'll be begging me -" He had kept advancing until he stood mere inches away from her, his sweating so profuse that his forehead gleamed under the light.

She stepped into him, pitching her voice just loudly enough so that his attorney couldn't mistake a word she said. "You're not going to do anything tonight, Mr. Winslow, except go home." She smiled a thinly curved, unfriendly smile. "You drove here, didn't you?"

"Don't answer that, Ben," his attorney warned. "Let's go home, just like she suggested."

"I was out on my boat, with friends. And I get Jemma's call. Hours, hours, after my daughter's been hurt. We get back to the marina, and I drive here as fast as I fucking can. You going to give me a speeding ticket?" He smiled back at her, trying to suggest equal menace, and the thought flashed across Myka's mind that she was facing only another version of her father, a man who believed his anger made him bigger, stronger.

"No, I'm going to open your glove compartment and look under your seat. How many grams will I find, Mr. Winslow? Then we can call Judge Miller together, and we can ask him how he feels about granting full custody to an addict." They were standing so closely to one another that she knew he felt her breath on his face; she could smell his sweat. She contemptuously flicked her glance away from him and stared at his attorney. "Get him out of here, or I'll have his car searched. What's the likelihood that he'll be arrested for possession of a controlled substance?"

Howard yanked Winslow away from her. "Ben, we're going . . . now." He was still a lackey, but he was the lackey in charge at the moment, and Winslow didn't resist the command in his voice. Still muttering threats about custody and "changing everything on Monday," Winslow followed him, and Myka didn't pick up the bag she had dropped and abandon the corridor for Christina's room until she was certain they were gone.

Jemma and Helena and Christina were playing a card game, although Jemma was having to play both her and Christina's hands. "Go fish, Mommy," Christina was saying. She brightened upon seeing Myka. "I'm winning, My-ka, I'm winning."

Helena didn't stop mid-motion, but she slowed her lean toward the draw pile. "Is he gone?"

"Yes."

"For now, you mean." She picked a card and turned it over. "Aces, pumpkin, I've nabbed a three. Do you have a five?" As Christina and Jemma consulted, she glanced at the bag Myka was carrying. "Did you bring pajamas?" The smile she flashed conveyed more fatigue than wickedness. "Do you need help changing into them?"

There were several more games of Go Fish after Myka and Helena changed into pajamas. Helena pulled on the drawstring of the pants Myka had selected for her as much as she could, but they still drooped rather endearingly, and she folded over the ends of the legs so they wouldn't drag the floor. Christina grandly excused her grandmother from changing into pajamas since she wasn't staying over, but she had to eat both a cookie and a cupcake and she had to promise not to leave until everyone else had "gone to bed." After badgering Myka into her own promise that sometime soon she would tell another story about The Princess Who Lost Her Hair, Christina began to wind down, drowsily suffering another visit from one of the nurses. She fell asleep soon after, and Jemma stiffly rose from the visitor's chair, claiming that she would be back as soon as she could in the morning.

Sitting at the foot of the bed in a pair of pale blue cotton pants and a scoop-necked top that almost matched, Myka surveyed the cookie and cupcake crumbs that decorated the sheets and blanket and the dab of frosting that was like a beauty mark just above Christina's upper lip. On one of her visits home, her nephew had been recuperating from the flu and she remembered venturing into his bedroom for an occasional two-minute visit but spending most of her time at her sister and brother-in-law's house in their family room, watching football with Kevin. She would run up glasses of cranberry juice and medicine and anything else that Tracy called down for, but it was always with the awareness that she bore a tangential relationship at best to this other Bering family; her nephew was only that and her sister seemed less her sister than her nephew's mother. Even the distance that had always existed between her and Kevin - six years of marriage hadn't resulted in her feeling she knew Kevin much better now than before they had married - had a different feel to it. He wasn't just incidentally Tracy's husband and their child's father, he belonged here in this room with its theater-seating and giant TV; she was the one who was incidental, unnecessary, a temporary add-on to the Clausen (not Bering) family. This with Christina was different. She wasn't an interloper. She had a part, a role; she was integral. With a casual authority she didn't bother to consider that Jemma (or Helena) might find presumptuous, she said, "I'll be here tomorrow morning, Jemma. Why don't you stay home and get things ready for her?"

Jemma seemed neither surprised nor put out, and Helena had only smiled as if she were aware of yet another secret whose existence Myka was only belatedly discovering. Myka accompanied Jemma to the parking lot, unembarrassed that she was wearing pants so worn that the color of her underwear practically showed through them and a top that had seen better days. She was humoring a sick child and that took precedence over considerations about how frowzily she was dressed. She worked the car seat from the backseat of Jemma's car, prepared to lug it through acres of hospital parking lot to her own car.

"I had to call him, Myka. Mainly I did it because it's part of the custody arrangement, not because I thought he deserved to know. He's her father only when he wants to be, usually when he thinks it will irritate Helena the most."

"How did he find out that Christina is his?"

Jemma shrugged. "Not from me and not from Helena. She only told me after I asked her, point-blank, if the baby was Nate's. I didn't see her for over two years after that art gallery heist." Her head was turned in her direction, but it was too dark for Myka to tell whether Jemma was looking at her. "When you came to question me, I honestly didn't know if she had been involved. I had suspected something was going on with her, but she made it a rule never to tell me what she and her father were cooking up. I didn't see her again until after her father died, and she looked horrible. Too thin, pasty skin, and she couldn't look you straight in the face. I'll always give Helena that, she'll look you straight in the face when she lies to you. But not then. I was back living in London, but she took off again after a few days. Another year passed, and she called me to tell me she was pregnant. She wanted me to move to New York, help teach her how to be a mother to her baby." Jemma's laugh was humorless. "She needed a better teacher, but I was all she had." Myka could feel the eyes she couldn't see boring into her. "The only man she had ever been with for any length of time had been Nate, so I asked her if Nate was the father. She choked so hard at the thought, I feared she might pass out. She said it wasn't Nate, but I had to pry it out of her. Eventually she said she had slept with the owner of the gallery that was showing Jim's paintings. She said it had been a mistake but that she was keeping the baby." She paused before saying more slowly, as if to make sure that Myka wouldn't miss a word, "When I saw her after Jim died, she reminded me of you, you had the same hollowed-out look when you came to my apartment. It wasn't Jim's dying that did it to her, it was what she had done to you. I told her more than once when the two of you were together that if she were running a con on you, she'd regret it. She'd always ask me why, and I'd always say, 'Because it'll hurt you just as much as it'll hurt her.' She'd always tell me right back, 'I know.' She'd never say so, but I thought her keeping Christina was her way of trying to make things up to you, to prove that she could put someone above herself." Jemma laughed again, and this time it was full and rich and the amusement was unalloyed. "Of course, I wasn't seeing the whole picture, I usually don't when it comes to Helena."

"What did you miss?" Myka's grip on the car seat had tightened. She felt that her knuckles were about to break through her skin.

"She always has her eyes on the long game. Have you never wondered why she returned to New York? Why she stayed when your agency, the whole alphabet soup of you people, were still looking for the ones behind the heist? Why she let herself be arrested for that stupid little Ponzi scheme her friend had thought up? Now actual prison time probably wasn't part of her plan, but the rest of it, it was all for you, Myka. She was showing you that she was back, that she had changed, and that she was waiting for you. And if you think that's the silliest thing you ever heard, just look where you are now. You're in your jammies holding a car seat, ready to spend the night in a chair watching over a little girl and her mother."

When Jemma drove away, Myka was still standing, still holding the car seat. Jemma might attribute God-like powers of omniscience to her daughter - it wasn't as though she could brag about Helena's skill in forging paintings or in duping victims to her friends - but Helena couldn't have and wouldn't have designed the play of events that led them to this moment, this night. That said, there was something about Helena's decision to make a home here and her own refusal to leave, even when her disenchantment with both her job and Sam had been prodding her on an almost daily basis to make a change, that suggested they had been waiting, however unknowingly, on the other. And as if a 25 cent, gimcrack confirmation were all she had needed to confirm her belief that the universe was managed by someone or something with a Pete Lattimer-like sense of humor, she was able to get the car seat locked into her backseat on the first try.

Helena had draped a blanket over her and molded a pillow to her head in the bed she had made for herself in the Mommy recliner, but she was awake when Myka re-entered the room. She had placed a visitor's chair next to her, although she had also tried to squeeze herself into the recesses of the recliner. With a pat of her hand on the cushion, she invited Myka to share it with her. Her mouth curved in a soundless laugh when Myka took the visitor's chair. The lights in the room were off, but the glow from the various monitors was strong enough that Myka had little difficulty in reading the worry that overtook Helena's expression.

"How did you chase Ben away?"

"By threatening to arrest him for possession of a controlled substance. It was close enough to the truth that his attorney dragged him to the elevators."

"It won't matter if he's using again. His father will protect him. He always does." Helena drew the blanket up to her chin. She turned to look at Christina and then shook her head as she looked back at Myka. "It's taken me longer to get money from an ATM than it did to conceive her with him. We stared at each other in horror and then we were both jumping up and zipping our pants. I hadn't been on birth control. I hadn't had sex in ages, and I certainly hadn't been anticipating having it with him. I told myself that I should get the morning-after pill, just in case, but it slipped my mind, and then it had been so quick, I convinced myself that I couldn't possibly have gotten pregnant." The blanket rippled as she spread her hands underneath it. "I was wrong."

"Do you know how he found out?"

"I've always thought it was his father. The good senator has his minions clean up after Ben. They persuade the district attorneys not to press charges, the papers not to publish stories. When I was arrested, some of the old stories about the Marston Gallery began to circulate. He would have had his people look into them and make sure there was nothing that could hurt his precious son. Someone would have found out about Christina and could have done the math. Figured it was possible since Ben and I had been business associates around the same time. Then came the court order for the DNA test. You would think the opposite would have happened, that the senator would have paid to have the results destroyed. But I hear he's quite fond of his grandchildren. They're too young to be disappointments."

As though she had written them on index cards, Myka skimmed through her recent collection of Winslow's rants and snarls, finding the one that had him complaining that he had learned of Christina's existence from "an agent in a suit." Not likely that it would have been through his father's auspices, but she already had a good idea about who was responsible for informing Ben Winslow that he was the proud father of a little girl. Like Jemma, she hadn't been allowed to see the whole picture, but Helena wasn't the one to blame. Trying to find a more comfortable position in the chair, she hooked her legs over the opposite arm and felt her head slide across the cushion of the headrest until the cushion gave out at the juncture of the headrest and the frame.

"Ben can't take Christina from me, but his father can. You won't be able to scare him off, Myka." Helena's tone changed, allowing that fondness that did such treacherous things to Myka to sweeten it, lighten it. "Thank you, though, for coming to my rescue the way you did. You have no idea how sexy you were. I suppose a good mother wouldn't have entertained such a thought, she would have been concentrating solely on her child, but I'm not a good mother and you were very, very sexy."

"I blew the case today, Helena. Parker had called about your monitor going off . . . . I told Laura Jeffries that we were on to DeWitt and her husband. I gave her 48 hours to come in and try to make a deal with us." How sexy does that make me now?

Helena was silent for a long time. "It's not how I envisioned you telling me that you still loved me, but beggars can't be choosers, I suppose." As Myka gaped at her, Helena said swiftly, fiercely, but in a voice hardly above a whisper, "Don't you deny it. You were rattled, you panicked. You forgot ten years' worth of training. Don't tell me that I don't mean anything to you. You care, you've always cared, you will always care." She held up a finger from beneath the blanket. "Don't me that it's the job that makes you care." She leveled the finger at Myka. "It's never been about the job or the Neanderthal or Nate or anything else, it's always been about us." She fell silent again. "The other part, about blowing the case." A blanket-covered shoulder was lifted and dropped. "It's not irreparable, but we'll have a lot to do tomorrow. Plus you'll have to come up with another installment in that execrable fairy tale of yours, she'll be expecting it. So I suggest you get some sleep."

Myka wasn't sure what woke her. Maybe Christina had whimpered in pain or the nurse's shoes had squeaked on the floor when he or she had come in for yet another status check. Her neck was stiff, but she was warm. Strangely so. Helena murmured and backed her butt into her. Myka realized she was in the Mommy recliner, her head lolling against the backrest, one leg flung over the chair's arm and the other pinned to the inside by the weight of Helena's legs. Her arm was clamped over Helena's stomach, held in position by Helena's arms. "In the interests of full disclosure," Helena whispered, "I probably should tell you that I've heard from Nate. He wants to talk about the Bowdoin works. It won't be tomorrow or next week, it might not be for a month or two. It depends on how long he wants to keep me waiting, but he won't forget."

She shouldn't have gone to sleep after hearing that. She definitely shouldn't have gone to sleep in the Mommy recliner with Helena snuggled against her. But since there were so many disasters looming in front of them and she couldn't choose which one she should worry about more, it was easier to worry about none of them. It was also easier to slide down the chair and extinguish what little space existed between her and Helena than to crawl out and return to her own chair. It was easy to pull Helena closer to her, and Helena, not really asleep but pretending, obliging by crushing herself against her. Myka may have let her nose part Helena's hair, and she may have kissed Helena's scalp more than once, possibly several times. She may have heard Helena sigh very audibly and contentedly as she did so, and she may have wondered at the wisdom of what she was doing, but since she had shown very little wisdom the entire day, she may have felt that acting unwisely, yet again, had consistency going for it, if nothing else. There was a saying about something, evil, troubles, foolishness - Myka might have buried a yawn against Helena's neck and Helena might have shivered and held Myka's arm tighter across her - being sufficient unto the day thereof and tomorrow taking care of itself. They had met their disaster quota for the day, they had the night to sleep and forget what was awaiting them.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Maybe I was a little self-indulgent with yet more Myka and Helena (and Christina), but is that really so bad?

Myka watched Christina fall asleep. It seemed that watching was what she had been doing all day - watching Christina battle against her sling, watching her laptop screen in the vain hope that the resolution to the mess she had made of the fraud case would pop up on it, watching Steve as he doggedly reviewed their case files in the de facto field office they had made of the kitchen, dining room, and living room of Christina and Jemma's home, and, above all, watching Helena. Whereas a circle of dirty mugs and cups surrounded Steve at the dining room table (an herbal tea drinker normally, he had swiftly gone through Jemma's supply of Darjeeling and English Breakfast tea bags) and she had left a pile of peanut shells and cans of soda by her laptop, Helena had needed no stimulus other than tomorrow's looming disasters. The probable no-show of the Jeffries and Ben Winslow's renewed threats to take Christina from her seemed only to energize her, a perfect storm into which she was more than happy to fling herself. She said she was ready for the performance of a lifetime should the Jeffries turn up on the FBI's doorstep, and seeing how her eyes sparked and her smile became feral at the possibility, Myka didn't doubt that she was ready for the challenge.

Christina's bedroom was a backwater by comparison, despite the fretting and crying of its primary occupant, and since she hadn't complained in the past ten minutes that her "'lollar bone hurt" or that she wanted another story about the bald princess, Myka thought it might be the most peaceful place she would occupy for the foreseeable future. She would give Christina, and herself, another five minutes and then she would surrender to the tempest downstairs. Suddenly she jerked against the back of the rocking chair that Jemma had brought into the room hours ago; she didn't see anyone, but she knew she wasn't alone. Putting her hand to the back of her neck, she turned her head and saw Helena leaning against the doorframe. Helena held her finger against her lips then crooked it to signal to Myka to join her in the hallway. Taking the stork-like steps that every adult seemed to take when sneaking away from a sleeping child, Myka tiptoed into the hallway.

Helena had changed into . . . pajamas, or that's what Myka would have called the soft cotton hoodie and flowing pants if she were wearing them. She tried not to notice that the hoodie was only partially zipped up and that Helena, naturally, wasn't wearing a bra. Myka rubbed her eyes, hoping they might cross and, thus, provide a field of vision limited to her nose, but they didn't cross and, as they refocused, Helena's hoodie and the generous amount of breast swelling though its unzipped halves swam into view.

"It's past 11:00. I sent Steve home, and you need to get some sleep, too," Helena said quietly.

"You did what?" Keeping her voice at the same hushed level as Helena's robbed her words of much of their indignation, Myka realized.

"We've done all we can do. We put on our show for the Jeffries with what we have." Helena idly - or not so idly - tugged at the cord to her hood. Myka's glance involuntarily followed the action, dropping down - also involuntarily - to take in the slight, very slight movement of her breasts. Pressing her lips together in frustration, Myka lifted her eyes up, up only to meet Helena's sly smile. "We need to look confident, and we won't pull that off if we don't look rested." Her smile grew deeper. "I'm happy to offer my services if you need help getting to sleep."

"I'm not sleeping here, Helena." The whispering was making her sound petulant rather than firm or determined or unyielding, any one of which was better than petulant.

Helena's smile didn't diminish, but she said with the implacability that had eluded Myka, "I'm not leaving my daughter tonight. You may be able to catch Steve if you hurry and have him stay here with me, but I am  _not_  leaving." She tilted her head at the wall, on the other side of which Christina lay sleeping. "Besides, when she wakes up in another hour or two, crying and demanding to know where her mommy and her nonni and her My-ka are . . . ." She mock sighed. "I will not be at my best tomorrow if I have to console her for your absence." Helena paused, arching an eyebrow. "Welcome to motherhood, Myka. This is what being a parent is all about."

Myka didn't like the eyebrow's particularly knowing crook. "If these are the tryouts, then I'm obviously not going to make the cut."

"You think Christina's going to let go of you once your assignment has ended, assuming, of course, that Nate hasn't murdered the both of us?" Helena wagged her head. "You made her a promise today, and she won't forget it, no matter whether she's four or 40."

They had been easing Christina into Myka's car after her discharge from the hospital. Between biting back curses and trying to ensure that she didn't jostle Christina's arm as she settled her onto the seat, Myka wasn't actively paying attention to what Christina was saying. As long as it wasn't a shriek or sob, Myka figured she was safe in ignoring it. But as she gently bumped her head against Christina's, Myka heard her say in an awestruck tone, "Mommy said you saved us from a dragon last night." Christina grew pensive, asking, "Was it a big dragon, like the one that burned the princess's hair?"

Myka had no problem hearing Helena's derisive laugh as, from the other end of the seat, she was leaning over buckling Christina in. "A tiny little dragon that thinks it's a big dragon."

"Mommy," Christina said in rebuke, "let Myka tell the story."

Helena made an aggravated face but shushed. "Don't worry about the dragon," Myka said to Christina, amused at how easily she could boss her unbossable mother, "he won't hurt you."

"But what if he comes back?" Christina's features began to pucker in apprehension. She had woken up repeatedly during the night, complaining that her arm hurt, and Myka could understand how her fall, the strangeness of the hospital, and the difficulty in comprehending what her injuries were and why they should hurt so much would be compressed into the image of a dragon. It was a more satisfactory explanation than any of the adults, including the hospital staff, had offered.

"He won't," Myka said reassuringly, and when Christina failed to look reassured, she tucked a finger under Christina's chin and tipped it up. "You know why? Because he knows that I'll always protect you from dragons."

It was the kind of empty parental boast that Myka, only a few months ago, would have sworn that she would never tell a child. Parents often were the monsters they promised they would protect their children from, and Myka could thank her father for sparing her the illusion that he was her knight, her hero. He had never promised her that he would be a great father, or even a good one, so she couldn't blame him for not living up to a promise that he had never made. He had let her fight her battles alone, but such girl-powerish lessons, even if sanitized and decorated with rainbows and ponies for a very young girl like Christina, seemed . . . wrong. Maybe there was a time in their lives when children needed to be told flat-out lies like that and encouraged to believe in them. Maybe she would have turned out differently if Warren Bering had once said something like "I'll always protect you from dragons." Maybe it was enough that for now, for as long as Helena remained her assignment, she would be a slayer of dragons.

There hadn't been any dragons to slay on Sunday, except, possibly, her own anxieties. She certainly had been spending more time than an FBI agent charged with monitoring a felon and her daughter should spend running up and down the stairs, bringing Christina snacks and juice and giving her the occasional two-minute installment of the ongoing tale, "The Bald Princess" (it had earned a title). Granted, she had let Helena or Jemma attend to the whimpering and ill-tempered Christina, but every time that Christina had requested My-ka's presence, she had responded. Consequently she hadn't been in the "field office" part of the house long enough to claim discovery of the tiny clue uncovered in yet another review of the case files; it had been Steve's. And it had been Claudia operating offsite - thankfully - who, without being told what the information meant or why it was important, had scoured the farthest reaches of the Internet for anything tangentially related to it. Her scowling face on their Skype sessions had only confirmed her frequently repeated claim, "I'm doing this because I owe Helena, not because I owe the Fucking Bloody Idiots anything." Together Steve and Claudia had put together the "proof" with which she and Helena would threaten the Jeffries tomorrow, if the Jeffries showed up. It wasn't even proof - just a stray fact or two mortared together with supposition. Helen would be the one who would have to transform guesswork into what would amount to art if it convinced the Jeffries to give up DeWitt. Maybe her most valuable contribution, Myka decided, had been all that running up and down the stairs. If she hadn't done much to repair her fuck-up, she hadn't done much to make it worse.

"I can't stay here," she heard herself mutter, although begging to Steve to come back and relieve her seemed equally unviable.

"Why not?" Helena's annoying eyebrow was once again arching annoyingly. "We have the room here, and I bet you still have that overnight bag in your trunk with its change of panties and dress pants and blouse. If you go back to your apartment, you're not going to sleep. You'll pace, you'll try to do some work, you'll doze for a couple of hours, and then you'll go in to the office early, where you'll still not be able to concentrate. You'll drink too much coffee, you'll continue to berate yourself, and you'll be both jumpy and exhausted when the Jeffries arrive. You'll spoil my performance, and I can't have that." She waved an index finger chidingly.

Myka rolled her eyes. "What makes you think I'll sleep any better here?"

"As I've said, I'll give you my special turndown service." Helena's smile pulled more at one corner of her mouth than another, as if even she couldn't take her suggestiveness all that seriously, but then the line of her mouth leveled and her lips seemed almost to purse as Helena continued to regard her. "You'll sleep better because you  _are_  home, you just don't recognize it yet. Your home is with me and that imperious little girl in there." Another tip of her head toward the wall.

As Myka searched for a response, she was aware that her silence wasn't an effective denial; considering how she had reacted when she thought, little more than 24 hours ago, that Helena had been attempting to flee with Christina, she could search all she wanted, but she wouldn't find a convincing rebuttal. Not tonight, anyway. "If I do stay here, where are you going to put me up?"

"My bedroom, of course." At this, Myka's second theatrical eye roll, Helena answered with an exasperation equally theatrical. "Despite my dire threats about Christina crying out in the middle of the night for you, I promise I won't drag you upstairs to calm her, and my bedroom is far enough away that you shouldn't hear her - or me, in the event I snore." As Myka's expression remained skeptical, Helena added, "I'll be up here with Christina all night, so you can reassure your Neanderthal that your virtue was unassailed . . . unless I happen to sleepwalk into my bedroom."

"You don't sleepwalk," Myka said with a sardonic look.

Helena twitched her shoulders dismissively. "My sleep was seriously disturbed last night by someone who insisted on cradling me close and kissing my hair. Who knows how I might react? Who knows what I might mistake my bedroom for? What I might mistake you for?" She leaned into Myka, her voice more breath than whisper. "I'm not going to write off last night as a reaction to stress . . . or a dream, no matter how much you might want me to. What would you do if I crawled into your bed?"

Myka didn't have a convincing response for that either, but she could always take refuge behind the front of the humorless federal agent. "This weekend was an exception, Helena. Tomorrow night you're back at Mrs. Frederic's. We've already given Ben Winslow plenty of ammunition."

Irritated at the mention of Winslow, Helena spun away from her. "He's going to do what he wants to do, Myka. Money's not an object for him. What does it matter if I start staying here? Why do you care? I'm at no greater risk for decamping for parts unknown by staying with my daughter at my home. She's not exactly traveling light right now." A wail started to build from Christina's bedroom, and Helena said dryly, "She calls."

The morning drive into the city would be horrendous, but Myka didn't relish the prospect of driving back to her apartment at midnight. Besides, she couldn't leave Helena alone, outside her permitted area, this late. It didn't matter that she had cleared their waging (temporary) war against Christina's custody arrangement with Pete (he had been too stunned by the adverse turn in the fraud case to object) and it didn't matter that Helena wasn't likely to abscond with a four-year-old who regularly threatened to take off her sling because she didn't need a 'lollarbone. It mattered that the last time Myka had trusted her, Helena had vanished after stealing millions of dollars' worth of art. That was it, right? Her anxious self-questioning continued as she ran down the stairs and out of the house and to the trunk of her car, in which there was an overnight bag with clean underpants, slacks, and an unfortunately billowy blouse - the kind pirates wore in old-fashioned Hollywood movies - just as Helena had known there would be because Myka believed in being prepared for any contingency. Except for the ones that she created, apparently. Yet her overreaction hadn't been misguided, not really, only mistimed, because it wouldn't be an overreaction when Helena slipped her bonds for real. Last night, now that had been misguided, she sternly told herself as she carried her overnight bag to Helena's bedroom. It was one thing to comfort a distraught mother, it was another to hold her until dawn. Her promise to slay dragons had been to Christina, not her mother, who, Myka sighed to herself, was likely only another dragon in the end. Her promise about protecting the Wellses from dragons was limited to Christina . . . . Helena was all too likely one more dragon she would need to battle.

Dropping her bag on the floor, she surveyed Helena's bedroom. A bed, a bureau. The starkness reminded her of the loft, although, as had been true about its few furnishings, the bed and bureau were expensive, their plainness a kind of ostentation, announcing in the simple lines of their construction that no ornate decoration, no novelty in their design were necessary to put them out of reach of the likes of Myka and her government salary. The excess missing in Helena's bedroom had been reserved for her walk-in closet and its contents. The clothes had been cleaned and pressed with the military precision of a professional laundry service, but in the deepness of an occasional wrinkle, the seemingly permanent folding over of a cuff, they had the air of being as worn infrequently as a full dress uniform. They were, or had been, tools, just like her brushes and paints, the black velvet spread of her hair on a pillow, the smile hiding a secret at its center. Need a CFO? There was a sober gray skirt suit at the end of one rack. Would a trophy wife seeking distraction be the ticket? Hanging in splendid isolation was an evening gown that probably cost as much as the down payment on a house. Myka created a suitably modest space for her poor-relation pants and blouse, feeling they lowered the resale value of the closet by several thousand dollars. She wondered how many of the clothes Helena had actually bought versus conning them or walking off with them from designers and retailers.

"You've found the costume department." Helena was letting her fingers trail down the sleeve of a blouse that shimmered in a focus-challenging aquamarine. Too loud to be professional in most workplaces, it might have been worn by the brassy Jersey (maybe Staten Island) CFO for Advance Financial.

"Impressive," Myka said dryly.

"I even bought some of them," Helena said, her voice full of self-mockery. "But my prized possession," she went over to the shelving that lined the lower half of two of the walls and opened a drawer, "is this." She tossed an item at Myka, who reflexively swept her arm in front of her to catch it. A once-black t-shirt with a flaking, interlocked UC in gold. "I had packed it in my suitcase by mistake."

Myka had frequently slept in it when they had lived together. Since she had left virtually everything of hers behind when she walked out of Helena's loft for the last time, she had assumed it was buried deep in a landfill somewhere. "I have what I wore last night if I need pajamas." She tossed it back to Helena. "Your old studio - the one I knew about - it's part of an apartment that occupies the entire floor. The loft didn't survive; the warehouse was torn down to make way for a parking ramp." Helena had already refolded the shirt and put it back in its drawer. "But you probably knew that."

Helena's looked at her for a long moment, her eyes particularly black and unreadable. "I'm surprised you bothered to find out what became of them."

"I still drive past what used to be Bering & Sons when I visit Colorado Springs. It's an upscale bakery now. Pretty good scones and amazing cupcakes." Myka had never given much thought to why she did it, slowing down as she passed the storefront, which had been spruced up by a new paint job and a snappy blue and white striped awning overhanging the windows instead of the tatty one she had grown up with. She had less occasion to be in the part of the city where Helena had once lived and painted, but when she was, she would at least drive by the old studio and try to guess who might be living in the apartment. It had to be one of the few unanalyzed impulses she had. "Maybe it's to remind myself that life goes on."

Helena's eyes wrinkled up in a squint and her smile, if it was a smile, was pained. "This is when you scare me, when you talk about your father and me - you are, you know - as if we were just two shitty things that happened to you a long time ago. I think I'll never get you back because you're realizing that we're really not worth all that heartache, and yet a part of me is, strangely, happy for you." She drew in a shuddering breath. "Because you deserve so much more, Myka. You deserve to put us all behind you, to find some good person who loves you to death, to have a houseful of kids." As Myka snorted, Helena said defiantly, "You don't see how good you are with Christina, do you? You're her My-ka. You don't have to be so afraid, you're not your father."

"I think you're seeing things that aren't there."

"I'm believing what I see. That's different." Helena laughed, although like her smile, it was pained. "My father used to say that when a con started believing in what he saw, he needed to get out of the game. Only fools believed that any of it, families, love, friendship, were real. I see that she loves you, and you love her, and I believe it."

It's easy to love her. She's so much like you, the best parts of you. But Myka didn't say it. She looked toward the bed, on which her bag rested along with its mate, the bag holding the "pajamas" she had brought to the hospital last night. "Somewhere in that mess is a toothbrush and toothpaste, and someone told me I needed to look rested tomorrow, so I better get ready for bed." She leaned meaningfully toward the doorway, as if she were waiting only for the giant hook to yank her offstage.

"There's floss in the top left drawer. I know you, and toothpaste won't be enough." The smile's sadness had disappeared, and Helena's gesturing at the racks of clothes was as awkward as Myka's off-balance leaning. "'Someone' needs to pick out an outfit for tomorrow."

Helena had left by the time Myka came out of the ensuite bathroom. If she were being honest with herself, she was disappointed. As she settled into the bed, she expected that she would toss and turn most of the night or, worse, dream of Helena slipping into bed next to her and providing that slyly promised turndown service. She didn't sleep well, period, hadn't for years, and she never slept well in a strange bed. But when she woke, sunlight was stippling the room, and Helena was saying her name, low and insistent.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When Myka charged toward her cube, already off-center by having overslept and then being commanded by a four-year-old to eat breakfast "'cause, if you don't, you'll get sick and your hair will fall out like the princess's," she saw both Pete and Sam waiting for her. Slowing, she remembered that she was supposed to have met Sam last night to talk about what the hell was going on with her, or so he would call it. She would call it . . . she wasn't sure, remembering Christina's worried scowl as she plucked a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter and Helena's dramatic eye movements indicating the empty chair next to Christina at the breakfast bar. She had sat down, and Jemma (in her bathrobe and not completely awake at a quarter to seven in the morning) pushed a bowl of raisin bran at her. She had sliced the banana and dropped the slices into the cereal, ignoring the milk splashing her arm as Christina, left-handed for the time being, dug into her cereal bowl with determination, if only haphazard accuracy. She hadn't fretted about arriving at the office even later than she wanted, and much later than was usual for her, eating her cereal and listening to Christina reassure her mother that she would get lots of rest and not fight her sling and be good for her nonni. Then there had been milky kisses and pleas for Mommy and My-ka to come back for lunch before Jemma took her upstairs. She wasn't sure what to call it, no. Maybe she could call it "Breakfast" and leave it at that.

Both Pete and Sam were scowling at her, but their scowls weren't as endearing as Christina's. Edging between them, she opened her narrow coat closet and pulled out the blazer she kept on a hanger precisely for this emergency. Feeling a little less vulnerable with the pirate sleeves of her blouse tamed somewhat by the jacket, she said, her voice low and controlled, "If you're going to take me off my cases or fire me, let me at least try to save the DeWitt investigation." Glancing grimly at Sam, she added, "I'm sorry about last night. I just . . . " she helplessly shrugged, "forgot."

Pete looked from Sam to Myka but decided not to ask. "After you're done talking with Sam, stop by my office."

Myka led Sam out of her cube, feeling his eyes boring into her back. "Let's find a free conference room." They ended up in one of the smallest, tucked away from the noise and traffic of the floor. Though she had been given little choice but to agree to a late night meeting, she regretted letting it slip her mind, not only because Sam would take it as more proof that she wasn't the agent to lead the efforts to arrest Burdette but also because she remembered the last time she had left Sam to wait fruitlessly for her.

Sam remembered too. "Your memory's perfect except when it comes to her." He rested a haunch on the table and clasped his hands loosely in front of him, less the stern enforcer of the law and more like a baffled parent confronting his stubbornly transgressive teen. "Why did you marry me, Myka?"

She leaned against the door, crossing her arms, the perfect posture for the wayward child he took her to be. "Because I thought I loved you and hoped it would continue to grow."

"But it didn't."

She didn't answer him. She had already said enough on that score.

"Do you love her?" He had been studying his hands, but he looked at her after he asked the question. The look was calm and questioning, whatever hurt and betrayal he felt well hidden.

"Are you asking me as my ex-husband or as my liaison in Justice on Burdette?"

"I can't disentangle them, Myka. We'll always have a personal relationship, no matter what happens."

She suspected that no matter what she said, he would act on the opinions he had already formed and what he had already decided were the best chances for success against Burdette. Supposedly she had been selected because, despite the obvious risks in having her work with Helena, she knew her best and any tendency on her part toward forgiveness or turning a blind eye to Helena's machinations would be countered by her determination not to be fooled again. Now it was unclear whether she hadn't, in fact, forgiven her and whether she was a willing dupe in Helena's efforts to circumvent the agreement. What was their Plan B if they decided they couldn't trust her, after all?

"I don't know what I feel about her," she said slowly, "except that my feelings about her have always been stronger than my feelings about anything else. That hasn't changed." She tried to offer him a gaze as steady as his own. "Except now there are as many bad feelings as good ones. I don't trust her, but I do trust that she won't jeopardize her daughter's safety. I was wrong when I said she would be willing to risk Christina. Not even the tiniest bit. The side she ends up on will be the side that she believes will best look out for her and her daughter."

"Okay." Sam stood up and smoothed his suit jacket, ready to end the conversation and huddle with Pete and their bosses to make a final determination.

"I'm not finished," Myka said, just as quietly but her tone had grown harder, accusatory. "Don't assume that means she's going to choose us, Sam. I talked with Ben Winslow at the hospital the other night. He told me he'd been informed that he was Christina's father by a 'suit.'" She stopped leaning against the door, but she didn't move away from it. "Helena and Jemma assume that Ben's father went the extra mile to protect his son from what he feared would be an ugly paternity suit, but that's not what happened, is it? One of us, we ran the test and we informed the Winslows of the results. Senator Winslow might not like the idea of his son's association with Helena Wells, but he likes even less the idea that a Winslow grandchild would be in the care of a family of felons. Not good publicity for a senator who's big on law and order. You knew the Winslows would squeeze her."

"It wasn't me, Myka." Sam gave her a resigned half-smile, meant to underscore, she supposed, that it hadn't been his decision. "Burdette has to be stopped, and, honestly, is it really that horrible for Christina that the Winslows are trying to get full custody? What the hell is Helena going to do for her that the Winslows can't?"

Not treat her as a possession or a pawn, but Myka left it unsaid. "You knew, you knew long before we met with Helena at the prison, and you never told me. Just like you never told me that Burdette was the main reason we were springing her. How can I trust Helena, you ask. How the hell can I trust you?"

His expression had grown wintry, the smile vanishing, the brows lowering, and the pure blue of his eyes, one of his most attractive features she had always thought, achieving an arctic lightness. "You don't have a choice. For as long as you remain assigned to her, you do as we say when we say, and if she makes a move, hears anything from Burdette, you don't hesitate to tell us."

She had never consciously made a decision to keep silent about Burdette's communication to Helena. Since there was no time, no place, not even a clear confirmation of interest, the message had been something she pushed down the list of calamities that had to be addressed. She felt no greater compunction to disclose it now. "I've never come first with you either, that's clear, too."

He was standing inches from her, waiting for her to step aside so he could open the door. "Pete will let you know whether you're still on the case."

She watched him stride toward the floor's entrance, double doors with a modest agency decal on the glass. Anyone leaving had to go through the same security screening that anyone entering the suite had to endure, but she turned away in the direction of Pete's office before she saw him start divesting himself of his phone and the other items in his pockets. It seemed that this was the part of their relationship that had always come the easiest to them, one of them simply walking away.

_They had agreed that she would be the one to move out, although, as she stood in the foyer surrounded by cardboard boxes waiting to be filled, she couldn't remember why it had made more sense for her to leave. Like their marriage, their finding a new place to live had had little thought put into it, spurred mainly by a more or less mutual belief that they needed some place that was equally their own. She hadn't come to dislike the condo. Its location made for a relatively painless commute, and it had certain amenities she had enjoyed, but while she had referred to it as "home," she had never felt that it was. To be fair, she had felt the same about every place she lived, even Helena's . . . . She didn't let herself finish the thought and instead let it lapse by bringing the boxes into the living room. Her clothes and other necessities she had already transported to her new apartment, an even more unmemorable space than the condo, which she could still see, if only partially, from one of the apartment's windows. She might not think of the places in which she lived as homes, but she was a creature of habit all the same, and she was used to the neighborhood._

_It didn't pain her to be so close to Sam. The divorce itself hadn't been painful. No kids, nothing of value that they shared jointly except the condo, and Sam would probably sell it anyway. He had gotten a loan from his father to buy her out, but he had said more than once in her hearing that he was going to stay in it only long enough to put it up for sale. It wouldn't have made any difference to her if he decided to continue living in it. She wasn't numb so much as exhausted, as if their marriage had been one long, three-year effort on her part to try find something that mattered to her after Helena's betrayal, and no matter how many meals they shared, TV shows they watched together at night, times they sought each other out in the king-sized bed that Sam had insisted upon buying, her affection and gratitude hadn't changed into something stronger, deeper, better._

_They had agreed that she would have Saturday morning alone in the condo to pack and move the rest of her things, although it wouldn't have been an intrusion to have Sam there. But she acknowledged that it might be painful for him, he had wanted things from this marriage - children, a sense of family, an enduring commitment - that, in the end, it was unable to provide. She had been unable to provide. She opened the flaps of one of the boxes and began dumping books into it. The vast majority of them in the condo were hers; Sam read, but he preferred news articles, sports profiles. She more often read books on her devices now, but she liked the heft and feel of books, the slick covers of the paperbacks, the spurious stiffness of the hard covers; she even liked the vague "musty attic" smell of the paper in her older books. It was one of the few positive things she recognized in herself that she was willing to attribute to her father's influence._

_She hadn't been in the condo long, less than an hour, when she heard the door open and then Sam's embarrassed, "I'm sorry. I thought you were coming by later."_

_She wasn't sure how true that was, he had seemed pretty clear about the fact that she was coming over at nine, but she wasn't going to challenge him on it. She didn't care whether he had honestly forgotten or if he had hoped to see her, just as she didn't care whether he stayed or turned around and left. "I'm almost done. I'll be out of here in a few minutes."_

_He had been at the gym. He was wearing sweats, and his hair was plastered in places to his head. Sometimes he had come back from the gym, and she had dragged him back to the bedroom, liking the slickness of his skin, the faint bite of his sweat on her tongue. She wasn't the least interested in taking him back to the bedroom this morning, although Sam had an oddly expectant expression on his face, as if he were hoping she would do just that. She had no occasion to go back to their, his bedroom anyway, all that had been in it of hers were her clothes, and they were gone._

" _It shouldn't be ending like this between us," he said softly._

_She struggled with what to say in response. She wasn't sure what he meant, whether he meant that their marriage shouldn't have ended in the first place (even though he had asked for the divorce) or if he meant it should have ended in screams and tears, not undramatically, coolly, like they were two roommates separating because one of them had gotten a job in another city. "I'm sorry," she said, more because she felt he was expecting it of her than because she was sorry. "Guess I'm not cut out for it or kids or anything remotely resembling a family."_

_It sounded self-pitying, but if she wasn't feeling sorry for him, she wasn't feeling any sorrier for herself. It was a fact, she had simply stated a fact. "No," he was shaking his head, "don't do that to yourself. We just . . . rushed. You weren't ready. Maybe someday you will be."_

_Saying nothing seemed the best response. He waited a second or two before he disappeared down the hallway. She collected the few pieces of her grandmother's china that her mother had given her, wrapped them in the bubble wrap that had been in one of the boxes, and placed them in another box with more bubble wrap. She taped the box and carried it to the door. Sam was standing in the doorway of their, his bedroom._

" _You're going to be ready again," she said, shifting the box so she could open the door. "Pick more wisely next time, okay?"_

_He had taken off his sweat jacket and draped a towel around his neck. "You . . . we were worth the shot. I don't regret it."_

Worth the shot. He probably didn't feel that way about her now. With the words an echo she couldn't escape, she hesitated before opening the door to Pete's office. Inside Helena was talking, vehemently, based on the finger-jabbing she was directing at someone out of Myka's range of vision, presumably Pete, although the flagrant display of Leena's curls was visible at the far edge of the narrow window framing the door. For a moment, Myka enjoyed the view of Helena in tempest, the jabbing accompanied by what she could describe only as stomps around the end of the conference table, and she realized, seeing the flush of anger warming the pale face, that she also hadn't regretted the morning's delay because of this - the lustrous black sweep of Helena's hair along and over her shoulders, the provocatively cut black skirt, and the breast-hugging silk blouse, business professional only in a CEO's cocktail-inspired daydream as he was shuttled between New York and London. Helena was long odds - even at her most lovesick Myka hadn't been able to deny it - but as "worth the shot" continued to sound in her mind, she wasn't sure if she hadn't already traveled the distance from refusing the risk to affirming it.

She knocked and then, without waiting for Pete to call her to come in, opened the door. Helena cast her a quick, unsurprised look while her harangue continued unabated. "When we practically have to win the case in court before we can ask for a warrant to obtain the information we need, what do you expect?"

"What he expects," Myka said, sliding into a chair next to Leena's, "is that his agents will exercise judgment and discretion, especially in stressful situations, and not jeopardize an investigation. Both of which I failed to do." She nodded penitently at Pete, who moodily picked at a half-eaten muffin.

"Yeah, exactly what I was going to say, except longer. The Cliff's Notes version is 'Don't fuck it up,' and Myka, Jesus, I haven't gotten my appetite back since you called. You ruined my breakfast. Amanda was practically hurling as she did it, but she was making me and the boys pancakes. Pancakes with tons of butter and real maple syrup." Glaring at the remains of the muffin, he impulsively crammed the rest of it into his mouth. What he said next was virtually unintelligible, but Myka had learned through long practice to translate his food-speak.  _You owe me, like, a thousand breakfasts if both our heads don't roll after this_.

"She didn't act unreasonably given the circumstances and my history." Helena had switched hands, placing the one that she had been using to underscore her vituperation on her hip and resuming her jabbing with the other. "I'm the one at fault because I should have had the presence of mind to call her or Steve or you first."

"You should've," Pete agreed, "but since every damn day I expect you to knife us in the back, it was par for the course." His voice softening marginally, he said, "Myka, I need to know how you think you're going to save this."

As she ordered the few additional facts that they had gleaned from their frenzied repillaging of the case files and scouring of the Internet, she heard Helena cut in once more. "You might consider that it could have been for the best. We were running out of time. The longer we tried to crash DeWitt's circle, the more likely we were to make mistakes and to raise questions. Cons have expiration dates, and we were probably nearing ours. God knows any of them suspicious enough to have checked us out would have only had to go to page 4 of a Google search." She mock-sighed. "Thank God for Claudia and her magic. She managed to move down the results for my criminal history from page 1 to 4."

"You're not exactly selling your case," Pete said, brushing muffin crumbs onto the floor and focusing bloodshot eyes on Myka.

"And you're not listening to me," Helena said. "The case was bad from the beginning. Overlooked clues, poor interviews. Unfortunately my scheme to worm our way into their confidence was taking too long. They're too tightly knit to easily admit new members into their group, and the more we scratched for entrance, the harder they were going to look at us. On the other hand, the fact that we were investigating them, that we got as close as we did, it might be enough to turn one of them against the rest. Tightly knit, yes, but you don't enjoy the life they live by throwing yourself on the pyre for others." She pulled out a chair and despondently flung herself into it. "It was a cock-up all around, so don't put the blame on Myka."

"Hey, it's great that you're willing to accept some responsibility, but it's coming about eight years too late," Pete said sarcastically, shunting her a disgusted look before turning his eyes with their liverish whites toward Myka once more. "Christ on a cross here thinks you might have said the magic words to DeWitt's girlfriend. So what exactly did you tell her besides 'Hey, I'm with the FBI, and I'm going to arrest your asses if you don't cooperate?'"

Conscious of how keenly Helena was observing her, Myka wished she had a paper napkin or coffee cup to tear to shreds. Instead she had to make do with running her thumb over the race track loop of a stray paper clip. "I tried to convince her that DeWitt was using her, that when he left, he was going to leave her and Chris and their friends to answer for everything he had done. I told her that if we couldn't get DeWitt, we'd go after the rest of them."

"Considering the high-priced attorneys they'll hire, I doubt that had her shaking in her boots." Pete balled up the muffin wrapper and tried to make a free throw into the wastebasket. "So I guess that leaves us with what this, uh, Cadet Scholarship Fund you found mentioned in the files that you think DeWitt, Chris Jeffries, and this Alex McWhatever are using to con their friends and neighbors?"

"It will sound better when I explain it," Helena said with a cheeky smile.

Pete exchanged glances with Leena. "She's full of bullshit, but sometimes I think that's all the higher-ups pay attention to. Do you think we could get a few of them to listen to her spiel if the Jeffries don't show?"

Leena lifted a shoulder to suggest that she had no special insight into the minds of their bosses. "It's possible, but they're more appreciative of a magic show when it happens on Friday afternoons. I'll see what I can do to get them to give us some time today." Seeing the skepticism, and disappointment, of Leena's gaze as it touched on Helena and then on her, Myka was visited by a burst of misery sharper than what she had felt as the object of Pete's blustery scorn. When Leena's almost unworldly acceptance of missteps and blunders failed her, it was a better barometer of just how badly you had screwed up than slamming doors and threats of having to answer to an assistant director.

"The Jeffries haven't missed their deadline," Helena said. "Don't count them out."

Pete twisted his wrist with an excess of motion that signaled what he thought of Helena's caution. Pretending to peer at his watch, he announced, "It's after ten. When did you talk to Laura Jeffries, Myka?"

"Around noon," she said, straightening the paper clip and wondering if it would be less painful to swallow it than wait out the remaining two hours.

"If they were afraid of what we were going to do to them, they'd have been here bright and early." He blew out a long breath. "Leena, why don't we -"

"Not necessarily," Helena interrupted. "The Jeffries - this is their broadside back. They know we need the evidence they can provide, and they're going to make us wait for it."

"Thanks for the insight into the criminal mind," Pete said, his upper lip too tired to hold the sneer, "but your helpfulness on this case ended when you decided to take a flyer." Wearily he dry-washed his face, saying to Myka, "We're done for now. Take her with you, and let me and Leena try to figure out a way to salvage this mess."

Helena followed her silently back to her cube. It wasn't like Helena to do anything silently except paint, so Myka accepted it, along with Leena's disappointment in her, as a sign that her day was only going to get worse - as if the Jeffries' almost certain no-show and Sam's threat to remove her from the Burdette investigation weren't dismal enough. Someone, probably Steve, had left her an extra-large coffee on her desk, and while Helena wrinkled her nose at it in distaste, Myka blissfully cradled the cup between her hands before taking a sip. Even lukewarm, it was probably the nicest thing that anyone in the office was going to do for her today, and she would savor its caustic bite (on a morning less disastrous, she might be inclined to compare its taste to wet cigarette ash, but not this morning.)

"What did you really tell Laura Jeffries?" Helena was sitting on the part of the desk that would usually be covered with the files of active investigations. Although she had made a half-hearted attempt to tug her skirt down, an unprofessional length of leg was exposed, and Myka didn't bother to shut out the image of her hand sliding up one of those legs. The monitor seemed more a chunky ankle bracelet, an accessory, than an electronic shackle and wasn't an impediment to the fantasy. No, she wasn't going to shut it out this morning, and the longer Helena was in her cube, the higher Myka would imagine her hand going.

"What I told Pete."

Helena shook her head, a small, knowing smile briefly appearing. "There was more. The circus bear who's in that office might be satisfied with what you told him, but I'm not. I know you."

Even if she had been willing to tell Helena what she said, Myka knew she wouldn't be able to explain what had been behind the impulse, and she had been acting on impulse. To be honest, she had been panicking, but fear hadn't driven her to make confessions since she had been a child. Confessions in the Bering household didn't lessen the punishment, and making a confession to a suspect was always received as an admission of weakness. Unless the weakness was staged, a trap set for the suspect to betray something she wouldn't otherwise, a confession was the last thing you offered a suspect. A suspect was supposed to confess to you.

Steve popped his head around the cube's partition. "How did it go with Pete?"

Helena made a disgusted noise and slipped off the desk. She brushed past Steve, who collapsed into the visitor's chair. He hooked his thumb in her direction. "That's not because of me, is it?"

"No, it's her comment on how things went with Pete. Chances are good I'll be reamed out by someone with director in his title before the end of the day."

Steve grimaced in sympathy. "Sorry I asked." He hesitated before saying softly, "I saw Sam in the office."

Myka opened her mouth to respond but closed it as Helena reentered the cubicle and resumed her perch on the desk, phone in hand. "What did the Neanderthal have to say? I know he wasn't happy about this weekend." She began typing, her thumb skating over the screen. "If he's planning to rearrange our little arrangement . . . ."

"Helena," Myka said warningly.

Helena stopped typing, sending her a sideways look. Steve angled his head, appraising Helena in her Sex Kitten Felon Visits FBI outfit, noting the tight blouse, the abbreviated skirt, the monitor. "So, you're prepared to vamp us a win on this fraud case?"

"Whatever's necessary, Agent Sunshine." She crossed and uncrossed her ankles. Her phone vibrated, and she looked down at the screen. Grinning, she held out the phone to Myka. On the screen was a text from Jemma:  _The wee one is grouchy. When are the two of you coming home?_  "This," Helena leaned over to tap a freshly polished fingernail on the screen, "is what's outside these doors, Myka."

A cranky four-year-old with a broken collarbone who was already driving her grandmother crazy. Her unpredictable, untrustworthy, sexy-as-hell mother. That was what she had outside these doors? Despite herself, Myka couldn't resist matching Helena's grin. Then Steve was sitting up, clearing his throat, and Myka wondered when the principal had come out to the playground. Pete had put on his suit coat and reknotted his tie. Standing outside the cubicle, he was nervously snapping and popping his fingers.

"We're on," he said. "The Jeffries, they're here."

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very long chapter that I've cut in half. This is the first part.

It wasn't a cramped, sterile-looking room with a nondescript institutional table and plastic chairs. That wasn't how they did things, and even if it were, the suite didn't have a room like that. This wasn't an interrogation; it was a conversation, with any luck, a negotiation in which they would be able to come to terms with the Jeffrieses about their involvement in the insurance fraud -

" _Alleged_  fraud," Ted Roget, their attorney, interrupted. " _Alleged_  fraud," he repeated. He rocked back in the swivel chair with the leather-like upholstery and bestowed on them a confident smile. Chris and Laura were on either side of him, and, notwithstanding the fact that they weren't smiling, they didn't look any the less confident.

Pete was wearing a smile of his own, tight and impatient. "There's nothing 'alleged' about it," he said.

They were in Pete's office, seated around the conference table. There was no room connected to his office in which he could stand behind a panel of one-way glass and observe the proceedings. However, he didn't routinely participate in such "conversations," only when he thought his authority might lend a greater - and needed - weight to his agents' implicit (or explicit) threats of arrest, costly trials, punishing fines, and imprisonment. They were in need of so much more than Pete's higher salary grade and longer title, Myka thought. She had expected to see an attorney much like the one who accompanied the Jeffrieses, male, middle-aged, in a bespoke suit of a conservative color. She was surprised only that Chris and Laura hadn't arrived with a battery of them. It suggested that while they were sufficiently nervous about what the FBI might have on them to agree to answer questions, they weren't worried enough to bring in an entire law firm.

A tray with tumblers and a carafe of water had been set in the middle of the table, and the introductions had been polite. If there had been handshakes and a PowerPoint presentation Myka might have been fooled into believing it was a business meeting. The Jeffrieses' impassive expressions hadn't slipped the slightest bit when Myka and Steve were introduced as the lead agents on the case, but their eyes had narrowed simultaneously when Helena had stepped forward at Pete's "and our special consultant, Helena Wells" and they had seen her ankle monitor.

"You might say I'm a subject matter expert when it comes to fraud," she had explained, and Myka, though able to see only Helena's profile, had no doubt about how she appeared to Chris and Laura, mocking and predatory, her eyes almost shuttered closed and her lips breaking in a red slice of a smile over her teeth, as if she were already enjoying the meal she would make of them.

Seemingly laughing to herself at all of them (leaving Myka to wonder whether this was simply more theater on her part), Helena had poured water and distributed glasses to those who wanted it, and then Pete had summarized the thefts that had first brought Chris and Laura and other Barrington Academy alumni to the agency's attention, emphasizing that it was the one commonality that all the victims shared. "Strange that it should be so," he said, "since thefts like this are usually more random or, if they do happen to share certain things in common, it's not that the victims have gone to the same school. It suggested to us that the thieves had a special interest in Barrington, possibly were former students." Myka, sitting next to him, had observed the small twitches of his head, left, center, right, as he stared at the Jeffrieses and their attorney in turn. "Then the amount of time that elapsed between the reports of the thefts, not days, not a week or two, but several weeks, even months. The first theft I can understand, maybe even the second, but the others? Why wasn't there more suspicion? Why weren't you all checking your jewels after the parties and the get-togethers? It appeared to us that some of the victims might be deliberately staggering the reports and the claims they submitted to their insurers, and it began to smell like fraud."

"Regardless of what it might have 'smelled' like to you," Roget had said, "the thefts were genuine and the relationships between some of the victims purely coincidental."

"We have reason to think otherwise and view your clients as knowing participants in both the thefts and the fraud -"

That was when Roget had interrupted to insist that the fraud was "alleged" and hearing Pete's testy reply, the attorney, still casually leaning back in his chair, said quietly, "You can't prove it. If you could, we wouldn't be here. I'm a little disappointed, Mr. Lattimer, that this is the best your agency can do, especially since Agent Bering and your," he paused and then said with unmistakable sarcasm, "consultant, Ms. Wells, spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to inveigle themselves into the lives of my clients and their friends."

Myka felt an unwelcome wave of heat roll up through the open collar of her shirt and the fabric begin to stick in patches to her chest. To add to the humiliation of the morning, she was now being taken to task by their suspects' lawyer. Then she heard Helena's voice, slyly needling, "It was working, wasn't it?" She shot a challenging look at Laura. "As recently as this past Thursday, I received an invitation for the three of us to join Charlotte and Alex at their 'cottage' in Maine this summer."

"You weren't fooling me," Laura said flatly.

"Oh, no? You seemed a little . . . upset . . . that Agent Bering and Bryce were developing a bit of a flirtation." Helena smiled into her water tumbler as she lifted it to her lips.

"Because I sensed she was playing him," Laura said, an equally triumphant smile beginning to flicker at the corners of her mouth.

Helena skeptically arched an eyebrow. "And that's why, of course, you warned Bryce that she wasn't, we weren't what we seemed to be." She set her glass down. "You didn't do that, did you? Instead you pouted and you hung onto his arm and you gave Agent Bering enough cutting glances that she would have bled to death had they been knives. You acted like a jealous girlfriend, not someone who suspected that she and her friends had welcomed vipers among them." Laura flushed as Helena directed a sardonic look at Chris. "Has she always been this protective of him?"

"Don't answer that," their attorney interjected, "she's just leading you." Shifting forward in his chair, he offered Helena his own predatory smile. "You must not have a single thing to hang your theory on if all you can do is taunt my clients. Either show us what you have or we're walking out of here and I'll have the careers of every agent in here by the end of the day." He aggressively leaned across the table toward Helena. "As for you, I'll have whatever suspended sentence or early parole you've managed to wangle revoked, and you'll find yourself back in your jail cell so fast your head'll spin."

He turned his head to direct a hard stare at Myka. "If I can get you on an entrapment charge, you'll join your partner here in her cell."

She tried to stare back just as hard at him and not allow her eyes to slew to the side to catch a glimpse of Helena's expression. The threat to bring her up on charges was so much bluster, but he probably could get her fired. Disgraced yet free - of her more or less moribund ambitions, of the agency, of the desolation of the past eight years of her life - she thought she could live with that. Disgraced yet free, she could end up on a beach somewhere, building a sand castle with Christina while Helena lay under an umbrella in a skimpy and bold-colored bikini, maybe scarlet, maybe electric blue. Hand in hand, she and Helena could leave this conference room right now . . .

_Bates had assigned her and Helena to the case, a painting recently donated to a private university that had been determined to be a forgery. She had just returned from a two-week assignment to the Miami field office to assist in a counterfeit visa investigation, and she wasn't expecting to be reassigned so soon. Usually Bates allowed them a few days to catch up on paperwork when then had been offsite, and she would have welcomed the rest after a solid stretch of 14- and 16-hour days but begging off an assignment because of exhaustion, or any reason, was a quick way to sideline yourself. Giving 110% wouldn't guarantee you a promotion but giving only 100% could put a promotion out of reach. So there was that and Bates's "You two seem to work well together" delivered with an enigmatic smile. Myka didn't like any of Bates's smiles; they were all on the smug side, but she especially didn't like that one. It was the kind of smile that suggested not only had he caught you with your hands down the pants of a fellow agent in your cubicle after hours but he had stepped out of your line of sight to watch. Not that she had done anything like that, but the smile had her thinking back to her recent weekend with Helena in the Berkshires. It had been completely innocent, and not just because she had been laid up with a sprained ankle, but his smile gave all of it an illicit cast, especially the sight of Helena getting up in the morning wearing only a camisole and panties. She began to sweat under her suit, but she could no more push back against that smile than she could against the assignment._

_The university was upstate, a four and a half-hour drive northwest of the city. After informing her of the assignment, Bates added, "Hope you didn't unpack" and punctuated it with a different smarmy smile, one that suggested, without the licentiousness of the smile preceding it, that he was enjoying the thought of her having to paw through her travel bag for clean underwear. Myka supposed she should be grateful he was taking pleasure only in her discomfort, but the gratitude disappeared when, conferring with Helena on travel plans, she learned that a 4:00 p.m. meeting had been scheduled for them with the university's president and counsel. Dressed as usual in an outfit that deliberately failed to harmonize, the dark gray of her suit coat and lighter gray of her skirt awkwardly contrasting with the burnt orange blouse, Helena wore the mismatch with a casual disregard for how people, including Myka, subtly eyed it. She displayed a similar disregard for their new assignment, taking greater interest in inventorying Myka's face, saying softly, "You look exhausted. Are you sure you're up for this? I can talk to Bates." Ordinarily Myka would have bridled at the question and been quick to claim that she could handle anything Bates chose to throw at her, but the sympathy in Helena's voice, the concern in her eyes, was a different reminder of their weekend in the Berkshires and the unfussy care that Helena had demonstrated, embodying the nurse Myka hadn't known until then that she had fantasized looking after her: lovely, unruffled, and thoroughly in charge._

". . . the Cadet Scholarship Fund. When did you set it up?" Helena was focused on Chris Jeffries.

Ted Roget sighed plaintively. "What does that have to do with anything? If you don't provide us with something substantive -"

Helena crisply cut him off without looking away from Chris. "Mr. Roget, is it? Mr. Roget, I'm getting to the show part of the show and tell, but first I need Mr. Jeffries to tell me or, rather, confirm a few facts."

The attorney slapped his hands on the table and demanded of Pete, "Why are you letting a con artist direct this interview? It does nothing to convince me that you know what the hell you're doing. If she doesn't -"

"I trust my con artist more than I do yours." Pete smiled grimly at Chris and Laura. "There are many things I wouldn't trust Helena with, the keys to my car, my credit cards, the nuclear football, but she's never wrong when it comes to cons." He slid his chair back from the table as if he were preparing to stand up and end the meeting. "You can advise your clients to leave, but the minute the door shuts behind them, I'll have agents on the way to Mr. Jeffries's office, their home," his smile turned derisive, "their second and third homes. You make the choice."

It was rare, admittedly, those occasions when Myka was reminded that Pete was an adult, but this was one of them. He was in command, and, though Myka knew he would confess at some point, regardless of how this interview ended, that he was practically peeing his pants at this moment, foreseeing the Jeffrieses and his pension walking out the door, he was confident. He was even winking at Helena. "You want to talk about the scholarship fund?" Chris said suddenly, motioning to their attorney to keep silent. "It was something Bryce suggested to me and Alex four or five years ago. He had been a scholarship student and he wanted to ensure that deserving kids, no matter their family situation, could always afford to go to Barrington."

Helena nodded in understanding and, adopting a tone to match, agreeable, sympathetic to his point of view, she began to fill in the details. "The Cadet Scholarship Fund because that's the name of the lacrosse team all of you played on, right? The team Bryce captained?" Chris's head bobbed in unison with hers while the attorney again sighed, very loudly. "He wanted just you and Alex as the other decision-makers to start with," Helena paused, "because you're his best friends. You could always add other former Cadets as the fund grew." Another nod from Chris. "But you never have - brought in any of your former alums or teammates, that is. You'll take their money, but only you and Alex and Bryce decide where it goes."

"It's still a small fund," Chris said, his voice cooling, the muscles around his mouth beginning to set and tighten.

"Your donors don't have that impression." In contrast, Helena's mouth was relaxing, curving up. Myka almost expected to see her run her tongue along her lips in contemplation of which part of Chris she wanted to sink her teeth into first.

_Helena had driven, her foot pressing firmly on the accelerator, and they had arrived with ten minutes to spare for their 4:00 with the president, the university's counsel, and an unexpected attendee, the professor from the art department who had first raised the question of whether the Merrick donated to the university was genuine. Myka had tried to recall en route the details from the very slim case file that she had skimmed in the office, but she knew she had nodded off more than once. Her usual inoculation against fatigue, multiple cups of Starbucks's coffee of the day, had been no defense against an 8:30 p.m. flight from Miami to LaGuardia the night before and an alarm set for 5:00 a.m. Sipping the ice water the president's assistant had provided them and wishing it were Starbucks, Myka asked the president to explain how the university had become the beneficiary of a painting that, if genuine, would be valued at a million dollars or more._

" _Lawrence Vanderwaal was a graduate and, later, a trustee of the university. He had always been a generous contributor and was intending to make a large endowment, whether of cash or another asset. That it was going to be the Merrick was something of a surprise to us." The president was a tall, rawboned man, with the build and sun-damaged skin of a farmer rather than a former dean. "Larry had inherited the Merrick from an aunt, never married, who had been fond of him, and since he had provided for his children and grandchildren by other means, he thought giving us the Merrick was better than giving us cash since we could, as he said, 'watch it appreciate in value like stock.'"_

" _He had had the painting's authenticity confirmed, I assume," Helena said, looking more at ease in her stodgy leather chair than the others in theirs._

" _God, yes," the president exhaled with an unlikely, almost yipping laugh, as though being able to respond confidently and affirmatively to a question had become a pleasant surprise. "He had been raised on family lore that it was a Merrick, but he was too canny to take stories for proof when he came into possession of it. He had an expert take a look at it, and the expert concluded that it was a Merrick."_

_With a slight, unreadable smile, Helena said, "I've heard that early Merricks, such as this one, are difficult to accurately attribute. His style changed remarkably over the years, and at one point, he maintained that he had burned everything he had painted before the age of 25." The smile broadened into amusement. "Obviously not every painting, because some of his earliest works remain, but it does make for a challenge, verifying a Merrick."_

_Myka sipped more ice water unable to quiet the sneaking, and irritating, suspicion that there was no crime here. During the drive, Helena had given her a rundown of the difficulties associated with the works of Edgar Merrick. In the mid-nineteenth century, a student of various schools devoted to the American pastoral, he had become by the end of his life something of a maverick, abandoning the farmlands and orchards of upstate New York as his subject for dissolving, almost abstract seascapes that were supposedly inspired by long sojourns among the Caribbean islands. Helena had sniffed and shaken her head as she explained, displaying the esteem in which she held him, but she had conceded that his paintings, especially his earliest ones, were in high demand, if only because there were so few. How many times had Myka read of a Rubens or a Titian or some other masterwork identified instead as the work of a school, a pre-modern approximation of mass production? A wealthy merchant wants a still life, a church the painting of St. John the Baptist, and a nobleman a portrait of his favorite horse. How else could one artist satisfy three or five or ten impatient clients? Or in Merrick's case, how else would buyers eager to acquire a rare early work otherwise acquire one than to seize upon an expert's opinion, always potentially fallible in the end, that a painting in a very similar style was "unquestionably" a Merrick? A regrettable, and costly, mistake for the university but an innocent one. There was even a remote chance that they could drive back to the city tonight and close out the case with a few follow-up calls or emails._

" _Exactly," Professor Hobart agreed. "It's why I advised President Nolan to have the painting reexamined. Better, more advanced techniques for confirming the authenticity of an artist's work have been developed since Larry Vanderwaal relied on my predecessor's opinion. Professor Friedlander was a Merrick expert and widely recognized as such, but let's use 21st century means." He was good-looking in the same studiedly careless manner as Helena, shaggy blond hair casually flicked away from his face, a faint trace of stubble along his jawline. He had been not-so-surreptitiously sending appreciative glances at Helena since they had entered the room, and Myka, without questioning why she had so immediately made up her mind, already disliked him._

_Helena nodded, but the unreadable smile hadn't disappeared, which suggested that she acknowledged his point but hadn't yet accepted it as her own. "May I take a look at it?" Her nodding turned into a self-deprecating shake. "Not now, of course, but perhaps some time tomorrow?"_

_For the first time, Professor Hobart's glance was less than admiring. "Not to sound belittling of your skills, but the determination has been made." He turned to President Nolan. '"It's not an authentic Merrick; I thought everyone was in agreement on that, and our calling in the FBI, a decision I was not in favor of, by the way, was solely to satisfy the board of trustees that the Vanderwaal family didn't intend to mislead the university or profit from any apparent deception."_

_Helena gestured toward the university's counsel who had yet to say a word. "If you don't mind, professor, since we were contacted by Mr. Stoddard, I'd prefer to hear it from him. Do you have an objection to my taking a look at the painting?"_

_Mr. Stoddard glared at Professor Hobart before he spoke to Helena. "Not at all. We removed it from the collection currently on display, but Rosemary Hastings, President Nolan's assistant, can provide you access to it. Just give her a call and let her know what time you want to see it."_

_Helena's smile lost its enigmatic quality and brightened with approval as she directed its power, which was no small thing, Myka had to admit, on Mr. Stoddard. "What happens to the painting now? Does the university have any interest in keeping it?"_

_President Nolan coughed uneasily. "We've come to a tentative agreement with the Vanderwaals that we'll return the painting to them for a cash payment of its current appraised value, which is somewhere in the market of a hundred thousand dollars."_

" _Considerably less than a Merrick," Helena said quietly and looked at Myka, her eyes as unreadable as her smile had been moments before. . . ._

"We have evidence that since the fund was started, you've received donations totaling over a million dollars, yet it's unclear where, precisely, that money has gone. Based on Barrington's past and current tuition, the fund could have underwritten the attendance of several students, but we've identified only a few." Helena sounded authoritative, but Myka knew the pitiful amount of information supporting that claim. The Cadet Scholarship Fund was a nonprofit, required to supply financial information only to the extent that verification of its tax-exempt status was required. They had had no financial statements to work with, only the information that could be gleaned from public sources or social media networks: press releases here and there, information on Barrington's web site, postings from donors referring to contributions of a few thousand dollars, or several, to "Bryce's charity." Her tone no less accusatory, Helena added, "And from the students your fund has helped, we've heard numerous complaints that what they were promised in terms of the fund's financial assistance rarely materialized." "Heard" was an exaggeration since they hadn't had the time to actually interview the scholarship students and their families. Claudia had managed to ferret out several irate complaints from parents on Facebook, blogs, and various financial aid-related sites that the fund had ended up paying only a quarter, and generally even less, of their children's tuition.

Roget made another show of impatience, fiddling with what looked like diamond-studded gold cufflinks. "A certain portion of the monies raised go toward administrative expenses, and the fund has never promised that it would be the sole or majority source of a Barrington student's financial aid."

"Actually there's nothing on Barrington's site that says the Cadet Scholarship Fund will pay only a portion of a student's tuition," Helena swiftly countered. "In fact the language suggests the opposite. 'Students who are recipients of the Cadet Scholarship Fund can enjoy the benefits of a premier education without the worry that their families can't afford it,'" she quoted from memory.

"That's not our fault," Chris spoke over his attorney's "We'll have the school amend that language immediately." Roget gave Chris a stern look before continuing, "I can assure you that prospective Barrington students and their parents are informed that the scholarships will not fully cover the cost of tuition. I can also tell you that only the Hiram Walker Scholarship Fund -"

"Covers 100% of Barrington's tuition," Helena interrupted. "Yes, and Mr. DeWitt was awarded one of those scholarships. Strange isn't it, that his scholarship fund won't do the same?" That had been a nugget that Claudia, again, had been able to find in a cached page that, inexplicably since there was no obvious connection to Barrington, listed past recipients of the scholarship between 1950 and 2000.

_Eating McDonald's sandwiches and fries in Helena's hotel room (across the hall from hers) wasn't a meal that Myka had expected or wanted. She would have settled for a coffee and a banana if they could have been back on the road to the city, but they had no sooner left the university's administration building than Helena had been on the phone, not to Pete or Bates, but Joshua Donovan, asking him to find as much information as he could on the Vanderwaals; the history of Edgar Merrick and Dorchester, New York, which was home to the Vanderwaals and the university; Bellamy Consulting, the firm that had most recently analyzed the Vanderwaal Merrick; and, surprisingly, Adam Hobart. At Myka's puzzled expression, Helena had said only, "Just a hunch."_

_Myka didn't question her about contacting Joshua Donovan, but she noted it as something she would mention to Bates. Donovan had known ties to Gentleman Jim Wells, which, Myka reminded herself, was true of Helena too. Helena had acknowledged that she might have unwittingly participated in some of her father's scams, one of the reasons for her reaching out to the FBI in the first place. It was possible, although unlikely, that Donovan's assistance would be motivated by a similar guilt. Helena was cramming the cardboard container that had held her chicken nuggets into the sack when she said, 'I know I should've gone through the proper channels, but Joshua's better - and faster - than anyone I've ever met, except, possibly, his baby sister." She laughed. "She's already a terror, and she's barely 13." Her phone rang and grinning like the ring alone proved her point, she answered without bothering to say hello. "Tell me what you have. I'm under something of a deadline." She paused, listening to what Donovan was saying. "You know that I'm not at liberty to say." She fell silent again, except for a choked laugh at a joke that Donovan must have made. At the FBI's expense, Myka thought sourly. Helena placed her phone on the table and pressed the speaker button. As Donovan's voice, methodical, disquietingly inflectionless, carried into the room, Helena opened her laptop and punched a key to wake it. "Go ahead but speak slowly," she snickered and then said, "even more slowly than you normally do. I'm taking notes."_

Helena was chuckling, wagging her head in mock admiration. "For the longest time, we thought that the con was limited to the insurance fraud, but some of the purchases the three of you made, DeWitt's sports car, your investment in the development at Hilton Head, Alex and Charlotte's Maine 'cottage,' which, I didn't know until Charlotte sent me pictures, is a sprawling home on 20 acres of pristine land, those were all made within the past four or five years, and they're far more expensive than what you could have afforded with proceeds from the insurance companies, especially if you had to split it with the other 'victims.'" She held up her hand as Roget began to protest. "I know, I know, you're going to say your clients are wealthy individuals, but we're aware that Chris and Alex have experienced some, let's call them 'financial setbacks,' and as for Bryce, that car of his is beyond what a mere Barrington employee can afford." She focused more intently on Chris, saying quietly, intimately, "Even if you sold the jewels, as we assume you did, the money you received wouldn't have been enough. But then we looked more closely at the interviews, and it became clear that the parties and charity events during which these so-called thefts occurred, more than a few were to raise money for the Cadet Scholarship Fund. The thefts were just a fillip; the true adrenaline rush was the scholarship con."

"Coincidental," Roget said dismissively. He made an ostentatious show of looking at his watch, which, though not studded with diamonds, glinted expensively. "In order to make this meeting, Mr. Jeffries had to push back meetings with his clients and Mrs. Jeffries withdrew from hosting a charity brunch. You've cost them, personally and philanthropically, more money in this half-hour than any one of you will see in a year, and all you've provided them with are ridiculous and unfounded accusations." He pushed his chair away from the table. "Chris, Laura, let's go."

Myka felt her chest become slick with sweat once more, as if her sweat glands had responded to the bonfire in which her job and what was left of her reputation were about to be incinerated by dousing her in a fine mist of perspiration. Then Helena's voice, no less confident despite Roget's termination of the meeting, rose above the small noises of their leavetaking. "I was getting to the good part, about how Bryce has been bilking you and Alex, Chris, just like the three of you have been bilking your friends for years. Before you go, would you mind answering one more question?" Laura blanched and Myka's stomach shrank in apprehension of the gut-punch that Helena might be planning to deliver. Asking Chris if he knew that his wife had been sleeping with his best friend was the cheap shot that might keep the Jeffrieses in the room, but it would also be the admission that they had virtually nothing on them. "When did Bryce suggest that he should be the managing member, or maybe it was the general partner, of your little enterprise? My guess is that it was at the beginning. He was anxious, wasn't he, to spare you the tediousness of the paperwork, everything that had to be done to make the Cadet Scholarship Fund look legitimate. All he asked was that you and Alex sign whatever he gave you. Did you even bother to look at what you were signing, Chris?"

She had asked two questions, but Chris wasn't counting. He moved indecisively, uncertain whether to continue following his wife and their attorney or to sit down at the table. Helena's voice, knowing and tinged with the contempt of a master for a novice, harried him. "You've always let Bryce call the shots. It started at Barrington, didn't it? He sold papers, the answers to exams, but that was just the proverbial thumb in the school's eye. The faculty were idiots, and if he hadn't given Alex - it was Alex, wasn't it? - what he sold to the others, Alex wouldn't have graduated. Not the brightest of bulbs, poor Alex." Helena sighed in exaggerated commiseration. "But Bryce's schemes expanded to include fellow students as victims. Selling tickets to concerts that were always mysteriously cancelled at the last minute? Offering to fix the parking tickets, the citations for disturbing the peace that the local police issued or, rather, the men Bryce hired to wear uniforms and badges that would look legitimate to drunken teenagers?" Helena looked up at him and drawled, "Am I close?" Chris didn't answer, but he seemed to shrink within a suit even more expensive than his attorney's. "He said that you were different, you and Alex, true friends. He told you everything, and he shared everything. He always insisted that you take your share, although he did all the work." She paused again. "Sound familiar? He's been grooming you and Alex since you were at Barrington and, finally, you're going to pay off for him. Shall I show you how?"

There was nothing to support what she had just said. They knew nothing of what DeWitt had done at Barrington except captain the lacrosse team and ingratiate himself with students whose wealth he could only envy. Helena was running a con before their eyes, fabricating a parallel reality that would convince her marks, if she were successful, it was more real than the one they knew. What she was doing now, explaining the shell companies that DeWitt had established as shadowy parents of the fund and which existed only to siphon off the donations into other entities, even shadowier offspring, that was all invention too. They had no substantial proof, only instances of LLCs and LLPs vaguely linked to DeWitt's name, references to incorporation papers that they had had no time to request, let alone review. Yesterday afternoon, smirking at the irony of the words, she had said, "Believe me. I know this is how he's doing it, or pretty damn close to it." Steve had rubbed his face, eyes bleary from staring at his laptop screen, and turned to Myka, who having just come downstairs from inventing another escapade for the bald princess at Christina's insistence, was only with difficulty separating unicorns and magic spells from the equally fabulous content of their claims against DeWitt. "I don't have to prove it, any of it. I need only to convince Chris and Laura that I'm right, which is something else entirely. It won't matter if I get some of the facts wrong if they believe I  _know_." Helena's eyes were as exhausted-looking as Steve's, but they had gazed steadily at her.

That had always been one of Helena's best tricks, Myka conceded, as she listened to Helena describe how Bryce had relied on his friends' trust in him to sign the documents that would give him control over the bank accounts that held the fund's money and control over the disposition of the fund itself. She always seemed to know what you thought you had hidden from everyone else . . . .

_In a mere hour or two, Donovan had amassed a fair amount of information. Helena had been mainly silently as she typed, only asking for clarification or requesting that he "ferret out a little more, darling." As Myka listened to Donovan's drone, she tried to pay attention, but the significance of Lawrence Vanderwaal's late second marriage, the importance of Bellamy Consulting's recent start in the business of art appraisals and verifications, and the relevance of the fact that Hobart had resigned from a college under a cloud ("banging students was the rumor," Donovan had laconically said), escaped her. The call over, Helena closed her laptop and gave her a strangely tender look. "Trust me, there's something here. I just need a little time to tease it out. I think you'll see it too once you've had some rest. It's no sin to admit that you're exhausted, Myka." Literally too tired to move, Myka heard her say in a tone both indulgent and commanding, "Go, sleep. Or am I going to have to help you into bed like I did in that inn?"_

" _It was a bed and breakfast," Myka corrected her in a voice slurred with fatigue._

_She didn't remember much after that. She wanted to believe she had made it across the hall and into her room under her own power, but she couldn't shake the memory of bedsheets being turned down for her and a voice suspiciously like Helena's whispering "Good night" next to her ear. The possibility that Helena had helped her into bed grew when Myka, after looking for the old Rocky Mountain National Park sweatshirt that she wore during her morning runs and taking a couple of loops through Dorchester's small downtown without it, stopped at a diner for coffee only to see Helena, as she chatted with some of the other patrons, pushing up its sleeves. It was too big for her, and sweatshirts didn't seem her style anyway, but Myka had to admit that she looked cute in it, her hair loosely tied back and the deep green of the sweatshirt complementing the dramatic contrast of black hair and the palest of pale complexions. Helena didn't look much older than the students who attended the university, which Myka assumed was part of her plan. Farmer-style breakfasts at 6:30 in the morning weren't Helena's style either, but if her hope was to plumb the locals' knowledge of the Vanderwaals and Edgar Merrick, this was a place to start. Myka asked for her coffee and, on impulse, a danish to go (if Helena could do the practically unthinkable and wear a sweatshirt, she could indulge in a pastry) and returned to the hotel._

_Their only appointment for the day was an appointment to view the painting at 11:00. Myka planned to use the time before they had to leave to electronically catch up on some of her paperwork and to tackle the equally tedious chore of explaining to Bates why they would be extending their stay a day or two more. She was in the middle of rewriting a section in her summary of a digital piracy case she and Pete had worked on (she had worked - Pete had been occupied playing the pirated video games - "We gotta check the product, Mykes") when Helena knocked at the door. Dressed in a pantsuit so conservative ("dull" was the word that popped into Myka's mind) that she might have been mistaken for an agent, Helena cheerfully announced, "Come along, we need to go to the courthouse to request a copy of Lawrence Vanderwaals's will."_

_The memory of her in the sweatshirt lingered, and Helena looked bright and excited and . . . eminently kissable. The impulse shocked Myka but not as much as it once would have -_

Helena was describing clinically, dispassionately how DeWitt had managed, through a series of shell companies that he would have set up without Chris's or Alex's knowledge, to skim a healthy percentage of the funds their unsuspecting donors had contributed. "He's conned people whom you've never met for gifts to the fund and those gifts have gone straight into his companies, not whatever your little LLP or LLC is called, which Bryce led you to think is the sole clearinghouse for the cash you've scammed. He has accounts in the Caymans, in the Bahamas that are his alone -"

Helena hadn't stopped talking but Myka had lost track of the words. She was talking faster than she normally would, speeding through the surmises and assumptions that they had strung together yesterday afternoon and evening, trying to make them sound like facts, hoping to persuade Chris and Laura with the force of her argument rather than its logic. Everything was moving faster in the room, the tic in Pete's cheek, the ray of sunlight across the conference table, yet when she allowed herself to sidle a glance at Helena, she saw Helena in all her guises, each blurring into the other like images caught when a camera's shutter speed was slowed. The last she saw was the Helena who had stood outside her hotel room in Dorchester, saving her from another catastrophic mistake.

"She makes it sound bloodless," Myka heard herself interrupting, claiming her right to speak because this was her area of expertise, "but it's not. Mr. Roget has told you that you can't be touched, and that may be true, maybe we can't touch you. But Bryce has already taken from you what you can't replace. Whether it's today or tomorrow or next year, there will come a time when you'll never sleep easy again, when you'll ache and know you can't make it go away. Helena can't tell you about what it's going to feel like then because she's never felt it, Mr. Roget can't either." She stopped, conscious of how silent the room had become, except for her voice, as clinical and dispassionate as Helena's. "You'll never again know what it's like to trust someone. You'll never trust yourself. You'll look in the mirror and your reflection won't ever quite look right; you won't be someone else, but you won't be what you were either. You'll realize that you're not as smart as you thought you were, not as good, not as strong." Chris had become paler, and the willed dismissiveness of Laura's expression seemed to be fading, but she knew they weren't yet convinced that they needed to give Bryce up. So much for baring her soul, Myka thought.

Suddenly Laura said, "I want to talk to you and her," she pointed at Helena, "alone."

"Laura," Roget cautioned, "I don't think that's wise. At least let me be present."

She shook her head. "Alone."

They found an empty conference room. Or, rather, it was empty once Helena directed an imperious look at the two junior agents who were using it to have an early lunch. They stuffed their containers and sandwich bags of chopped salad and sliced hard-boiled eggs into their soft-sided mini-coolers and scurried out as Laura paced the length of the room. She swept her hand through her hair, which, Myka noticed for the first time, looked a little less glossy than normal, as though she had missed a step in her undoubtedly expensive hair care routine this morning. Maybe there was reason to hope.

Coming to a stop in front of them, Laura jerked her thumb at Helena but didn't look at her, keeping her eyes fixed on Myka. "She's the one, isn't she? The con who screwed you over."

What was the purpose of denying it, Myka asked herself. What was one more humiliation for her or the agency? Wearily, reluctantly she nodded, but Laura had half-turned away, the confirmation an addendum to a conclusion she had already drawn. "You were talking about being gutted but she," another flick of her thumb at Helena, "she was the one who looked as though she'd had a knife stuck in her." She resumed her pacing only to stare them, with wonder rather than accusation, trying to understand how and why they were standing beside each other now, Helena with a temporary access badge clipped to a pocket of her suit jacket. With barely a blink, as if she were simply reordering what she saw into a composition that didn't defy logic, Laura's eyes cleared, and she said, "I went to see Bryce later, after the race. I was planning to tell him that we were going to be taken in for questioning or worse." She half-sat, half-leaned against the table. Her confusion had returned, but Myka realized that Laura wasn't looking at them so much as through them, recalling what had happened with DeWitt. "He was on the phone, so I went into his bedroom." Her smile was wincing. "The normal progression for us."

Suddenly she pushed herself away from the table and went to stand in front of the windows, her back to them. Today she had worn a white pantsuit - Myka was used to seeing her in running pants and tank tops - and the combination of unblemished white with the burnished gold of her hair, it struck her as it had when she had seen Charlotte McCrossan walking with Helena at the Barrington 10K that these weren't women so much as jewels, gold, diamond, silver, with the world serving as their setting. Feeling her chest beginning to slicken with perspiration again, she wondered what Laura was going to tell them that would scuttle their case for good. Jesus Christ, was she going to reveal something that actually cleared him? Something she couldn't disclose in front of her husband but something she would be willing to tell them privately? Then why hadn't she tried to contact them earlier? As her anxieties increased, Myka could barely hear Laura over the condemnations, all, strangely, in Warren Bering's voice, which began to fill her mind. "I don't snoop. I don't look under his bed for panties, and I don't search his bathroom for strange tubes of mascara and lipstick." Laura turned around and tried to stare them down with a look that was both beleaguered and defiant. "I know there are other women, I've always known that, but it's one of those things that he and I never talked about, like we don't talk about Chris and what this would do to him if he knew." As is if seeking to repair the damage she had already done to its groomed layers, Laura sent a hand through her hair, further disarraying it, and Myka detected a glint of gray in its manufactured blondness. "But I snooped then. I found a passport buried in one of his nightstand drawers. It had his picture but a different name, and I remembered what you had said," defiance had all but surrendered to worry as she glanced at Myka, "about traveling light. He could roll out of bed, grab the passport from his nightstand, and leave. I suppose he has more passports and credit cards, too, hidden away somewhere and all with different names." This time her gaze landed uncertainly on Helena.

"Some of the names will be real and tied to bank accounts that are real - yours, Meredith's, Alex's." Helena made a wry mouth at Myka. "I suspect even Mrs. Carmichael might be in line to fund his decamping to the tropics or wherever it is he plans to reinvent himself."

"You didn't take Myka's money," Laura said almost accusingly, and Myka felt an impulse to laugh at the idea that, by seeming to depart from the script and not rob her blind, Helena had fallen short in Laura Jeffries's estimation of her as a criminal.

"I could say that she didn't have enough to make it worth the effort," Helena said sardonically, "but no con gives up the money at hand unless he has a larger prize in mind. My goal was to sow discord and confusion and stealing from her would have, unfortunately from my point of view, only clarified things at an inopportune time."

"You still managed to stiff me for the trip to St. Thomas." Myka had said it with amusement, and she saw Helena's eyes widen in surprise at the lightness of her tone.

"I have no doubt you'll make me pay for it, one way or another," Helena replied smoothly, but her expression was one of wariness and caution before she moved away to join Laura at the window. "What do you want me to tell you, Laura? That there's an innocent explanation for why he has a passport in another name?" The words sounded more challenging than the voice in which she said them. It held a sympathy that Myka couldn't help but believe was real.

"There's nothing that was ever innocent between me and Bryce," Laura said quietly. Her eyes flickered once more to Myka. "You said that I didn't like him at first, and you were right about that, too. I didn't go to Barrington, I went to a private girls' school." She lifted a shoulder. "There were more of them back then, and I didn't want any boys as a distraction. I was a very serious girl." She hesitated. "What appealed to me about Chris was that he was serious, too. We were young and ambitious with the grandest of plans. I didn't meet Bryce until just before we were married. He took nothing seriously, and I didn't like how he dominated Chris." She laughed, a thread of old anger hardening it. "Chris was on his way to becoming an executive officer in a Wall Street firm, and Bryce, he had just left as the development officer of some tiny little college in Pennsylvania. Chris was already making four or five times what Bryce was, but all Bryce had to do was snap his fingers and Chris would say 'How high?' Of course I resented him, and a few years after Chris and I married, I tore into him one afternoon for the way he was treating my husband." She cocked her head and her eyes sharpened, boring into Myka's. "The one thing you were wrong about? He didn't charm me. We were arguing, and we were alone - Chris was still at work and our oldest was a having a play date with his grandparents - and suddenly we were on the sofa fucking each other into tomorrow." She turned back to the window. "I couldn't get enough of him after that, and it's been like that ever since."

Myka remembered Helena's studio and their sliding against the wall as she tried to bury her hand in Helena's wetness. Helena had been keening into her ear, urging her to move faster and she had had to practically prop Helena onto her hip, arm supporting her back, to get any leverage. It had been awkward and clumsy and that Helena had come at all had had more to do with the frenzy of their coupling than with any expertise or coordination that she had demonstrated. Yet even then she had known that this encounter was different from any she had experienced before, that if they never touched each other again, she would still feel this crude, graceless joining as one of the most memorable moments of her life. She didn't have to imagine herself in a sumptuously furnished living room and discover that an argument was turning into something else, no less heated, something that would act as a dividing line between all that had happened before and all that would happen after, she had been there.

"You're still bound to him, yet you're turning him over to us," she said softly. "Why?"

Laura kept her back turned to her. "That first time, after he left, I felt so guilty, so ashamed that I went to bed and pretended that I was sick. Chris had to make dinner for himself and Kyle and clean up afterwards. He slept in one of the other bedrooms that night because he didn't want to disturb me. For the first few weeks, I was a crying mess. I'd go see Bryce and then I would come home and play the perfect wife. The guilt diminished over time but it's never entirely disappeared, and sometimes . . . sometimes, especially when Chris tells me how much he loves me," she limply fluttered her hand, as if, over the intervening years, her guilt had sapped her strength, "I could cut my throat."

She stepped back and held out her arms, helplessly, toward Helena. "I wasn't going to say anything about him until I heard her" she tilted her head toward Myka, "talk about what you had done to her, and I saw your face. If she'd asked you, you would've gone down on your knees and begged forgiveness, you were that sorry. Bryce has never looked sorry, not once. Not for all the times he screwed me and then acted as though Chris was as close to him as a brother, not for all the times some other woman has been in his bed. He's never been sorry for anything."

Myka didn't trust herself to look at Helena. She didn't let her gaze waver from Laura. "Are you sure that Chris will cooperate with us?"

A weary nod. "He loves me. All I have to do is say it's time."

Just as she couldn't let herself look at Helena, Myka couldn't let herself suck down all the air in the room and exhale it in one gigantic sigh of relief. As calmly and steadily as she could, she said, "It's time to end it, Laura, so let's go back and have you and Chris tell us everything from the very beginning."

 


	16. Chapter 16

It went as Laura said it would. When they entered Pete's office, she took her seat and, without looking at Ted Roget, said quietly to Chris, "I won't sacrifice our family for him." He bent his head, whether in agreement or resignation, Myka couldn't tell, before raising it, his expression unreadable. Speaking directly to Pete, he said, "We want full immunity." And then all hell broke loose. Not really, but Roget did leap from his chair, holding out his hand as if he expected a horde of FBI agents to descend upon his clients, although all Steve had done was to drop his mouth open in surprise while Myka was acting the impassive witness to the uproar. She had had enough of the golden ones. Rich criminals were no different, or worse, in the end, than criminals from lower tax brackets, they just got away with their crimes more often - to misquote Hemingway. The same would be true here, although Pete was violently shaking his head and stabbing at the keypad on his desk phone, asking for the attorneys to come to his office. She rocked her chair slightly, watching as Roget herded Chris and Laura into a corner of Pete's office, his hands on their backs and his mouth close to Chris's ear. This was what he was being paid for, after all, to develop a strategy, even if it had to be on the fly, which would result in his clients getting the maximum benefit from the very minimum of disclosures.

Helena had left the office, and though Myka knew that she was fleeing no farther than the restroom, she found her gaze returning again and again to the door. She was uneasy at Helena's absence, but she was more uneasy at the thought, unfounded though it was, that, having delivered DeWitt as she said she would, Helena was making a break for it - for real. She was grateful then to hear Steve's low-pitched "What did the two of you do to her?" as he wheeled his chair closer.

"I'm not sure," she said. "Probably nothing. I think Laura just got tired of the lies." Steve didn't look any the less skeptical at her explanation. "She's not a con at heart. She was in an untenable situation, and it was wearing her down."

A rap at the door, which didn't request admittance as much as it demanded entry, and then a couple of the staff attorneys, legal pads at the ready, came into the room. Myka had felt her heart lurch at the possibility that it might have been Helena returning from the restroom, or wherever she had gone. The attorneys gave Pete a questioning look, and he gestured at them to join him at his desk. It was uncannily like her high school cafeteria at lunch hour, Myka thought, a cluster of cool kids in one spot and another cluster in a different spot, and everyone else, too nerdy or forgettable or both, to gather at the fringes of either group, left to each eat her cheese sandwich and plow through another chapter of  _Anna Karenina_.

Unlike the attorneys, Leena entered without knocking, entering the office as if it were hers and giving Pete such a cursory nod of acknowledgment that anyone who was a stranger to the hierarchy - and even those who weren't but who were aware of the reach of Leena's influence - would think it was her office. She sat down next to Myka and whispered, "Has each side done enough strutting yet?" She pointed to Roget and asked, "Foghorn Leghorn?"

Myka chuckled under her breath. "Ted Roget, attorney extraordinaire."

Somewhere in the midst of all the growls and glares and impatient gestures, overtures to a negotiation were being made. Roget had suddenly jutted his chin toward the FBI attorneys' camp, and while the pugnaciousness of it didn't suggest to Myka that he was willing to start bartering for the Jeffrieses' freedom, one of the FBI attorneys arched an eyebrow and began flapping his legal pad to signal that everyone still standing should sit down. As Myka cast one last look at the door before the draping of suit coats over chair backs and the clicking of a battery of pens announced that the negotiating - or horse trading - was under way, Leena leaned over her arm rest again and whispered, "Helena's sitting this one out. We don't need her for this."

"She always savors a kill," Myka wryly whispered back. "She'll regret not here being here." Then as she glanced at Laura's face, in which only her eyes were expressive, she regretted her words. She knew that anguish. Laura would find it razoring through her long after today, long after it should have stopped. First you were gutted by how much of a fool you had been, and then, as you were asking yourself how you could survive knowing it day after day after day, you were sliced through by the razor's other edge because knowing what a fool you had been only underscored what a fool you still you were, because all the love you harbored for him . . . or her . . . you continued to harbor. Long after you should have stopped.

Yet as Myka listened to Chris quietly describe the history of his, Alex McCrossan, and DeWitt's friendship, the anguish in Laura's eyes was replaced by something hotter and fiercer as they looked at each other, resentment. Already the realization that she and Chris were likely to become DeWitt's victims as well had faded, and Laura was focusing only on the disaster that the FBI had visited upon their lives; Myka, after receiving a scorching glare from her, suspected that she and Helena in particular were getting the lion's share of the blame. Full immunity from prosecution was unlikely, and although Laura might escape imprisonment, Chris probably wouldn't. The knowledge was in his inflectionless recounting of his and Alex's meeting DeWitt during their first year at Barrington, and as the three grew closer, he admitted, DeWitt began to enlist him and Alex in petty scams. They did it, Chris said tonelessly, "not because of the money, we had money, but because it was fun." Myka wasn't surprised by how much of it Helena had gotten right so far. She had always been able to sniff out the con when no one else could . . . .

_They waited for the file clerk to retrieve Lawrence Vanderwaal's will, waited in her cubicle in thinly upholstered low-price-point office chairs. Normally it was a process that would take several days, so they had been told, but it was miraculously expedited once Myka displayed her credential. Helena had been plying the clerk with her most charming smile and admiring comments about the woman's grandchildren (if the family resemblance in the photos pinned to the panels could be trusted) but to little effect; once Myka had flipped open her leather holder, however, the woman's irritated explanation that "Processes have to be followed" trailed off, and she had murmured instead, "I'll see what I can do." She had showed them to the chairs in her cubicle, and here they still were, ten, no, closer to 20 minutes later. Myka restlessly crossed and uncrossed her legs and examined her fingernails while Helena had her head tipped against the panel behind their chairs, her eyes closed._

" _Silently urging Bonnie to hurry won't make her hurry, you know."_

" _We have the appointment to see the fake Merrick in about half-an-hour." Myka amended, "No one's saying it's a fake, I guess, just incorrectly attributed. A mistaken Merrick."_

" _It won't take me long to find what I'm looking for in the will. And I'm reserving judgement about this so-called mistaken Merrick." She opened her eyes and pulled out the charming smile. It hadn't lost any wattage, and Myka couldn't help but smile in response. "You have to be patient to be a con artist, you know. It takes time to set up a good con; you have to tend it, give it space to grow."_

" _I'm sorry, there is no point of similarity between defrauding people and growing prize-winning roses."_

_Helena read the copy of the will on the way to the university, her features squeezing together in concentration, forming a dark line from forehead to chin, as she flipped back and forth between pages. Bonnie the file clerk had given them the photocopy with a suspicious squint Myka had always thought was a novelist's license in descriptions of small town encounters with strangers but realized, being on the end of one, was actually true. Though to be fair to Bonnie, having the FBI sitting in your cube was enough to justify a wary side eye or two. She had said with unmistakable emphasis, "We're not up to trouble here, as law-abiding as you'll find anywhere."_

_As Myka had tried out her own version of a charming smile, wanting nothing more than to ensure their easy exit, Helena had said dryly, "That inspires me with confidence."_

_Wondering what evidence of corruption and graft Helena had managed to uncover in the will, Myka joked on the way to the university, "Have you gotten to the section where he says 'And to my alma mater, I give one fraudulently attributed Merrick?"_

_Helena theatrically sighed. "Wouldn't it be nice if it were always that easy?" She looked down at the will in her lap. "I was hoping for just an unhappy beneficiary, and I think I've found her."_

_Myka turned into the visitor parking lot, and Helena said nothing more about what she had found in the will, her attention suddenly fixed on the top floor of the administration building. Automatically Myka looked up at it as well but saw nothing more than old-fashioned multi-paned windows whose frames needed repainting. Helena's lips had parted, and she was leaning forward in her seat, expectant and eager, the copy of Lawrence Vanderwaal's will falling unnoticed to the floor mat. Myka realized that what Helena was looking at was inside the building. She was already viewing the painting in her mind, examining the brush strokes, analyzing the composition of its paint, walking away from it only to turn and take it in again, as if she were trying to see it for the first time one more time. They hadn't worked on many cases involving paintings, a few clumsy forgeries and one or two that were much more competently executed. Myka had found Helena's reactions more interesting than the crimes themselves. While the artistry of the fraud could excite vivid displays of her admiration or, conversely, her contempt, it also elicited something deeper in her since Myka would often discover her in her office (one of the larger cubes in the cube farm) days later sketching on the legal pads that she should have been using to write up her case notes the figure or landscape that the forger had replicated, correcting the details that he had been too inept or too hurried to get right. Strangely charmed by her absorption in something so counterproductive to completing the case file, Myka would think that it was in these moments that Helena was at her happiest consulting with the agency, maybe the happiest, period._

" _Let's go see this bruising loss to the university's endowments fund, shall we?" Helena said it with such anticipation that Myka had to firmly push aside the possibility that she was finding her a little too attractive a little too frequently._

_When they entered the executive offices, which looked brighter and friendlier at 11:00 in the morning than at 4:00 in the afternoon, a woman rose from her desk outside the president's office to greet them. She looked at her watch and gave them the appreciative smile of someone whose main responsibility was maintaining her boss's schedule. "Eleven o'clock, spot on." Myka heard Helena's soft, strangled groan at such devotion to punctuality, but Rosemary Hastings was already too far ahead of them to have heard her. Ms. Hastings led them to a conference room between the president's office and another, smaller office that had to announce its importance, unlike the president's office, by a name plate identifying its occupant as the provost. In the conference room on a flimsy metal stand that had once held the oversized pads of paper for brainstorming sessions before white boards supplanted them was the Merrick. Or fake Merrick, depending on your point of view._

_To Myka's untrained eyes, it looked like any number of nineteenth century landscapes, puffy clouds, puffy hills, puffy trees, all those gently rounded shapes vaguely breast-like. However, Helena was transfixed, eyes roving over the painting as if she were trying to fix its every feature in her memory. For a moment, Myka had the disturbing image of Helena looking at her the same way that she was looking at the painting, and the image became more disturbing as she imagined Helena's fingers following the path of her eyes._

"  _. . . if there's anything else," Ms. Hastings was saying._

" _If you could provide me with copies of Professor Friedlander's and Bellamy Consulting's appraisals, that would be helpful," Helena didn't turn her head away from the painting._

_Apparently Ms. Hastings was used to working with higher mortals and their moods. "Of course, I'll get them for you right away."_

_The only sounds that filled the room were the stentorian rumbling of the heating system, its laboring suggesting that it was only slightly more modern than the building it was housed in, and Helena's muttering, most of which was incomprehensible, with the exception of "Yes, I see that" and "There you go, Edgar" that didn't make her talking to a portrait seem crazy as much as it did maternal, as if she were gruffly admiring her child's efforts with a paintbrush._

_Ms. Hastings returned with a sheaf of paper, which she silently placed on the conference table behind Helena, who registered her presence by a belated, grunted thanks. Detouring to ask Myka if she would like a cup of coffee or tea, Ms. Hastings cast a mournful look at the painting. "Mr. Vanderwaal would be rolling over in his grave if he knew what was happening to it. He thought he was giving the university one of his most prized possessions. There's a lot of history between the Vanderwaals and the university and a lot of history between the Merricks and the Vanderwaals. He thought by donating the painting he was, I don't know, closing the circle."_

_Myka would admit, reluctantly, that she didn't have Joshua Donovan's information-gathering skills, but she knew how to take advantage of an opportunity when it was offered to her. "A cup of coffee would be great and maybe a little of that Merrick-Vanderwaal history, if you're willing."_

" _Will we be disturbing her?" Ms. Hastings asked, rolling her eyes in Helena's direction._

" _She no longer knows we're here," Myka said._

_Only to be immediately contradicted by Helena, saying admonishingly, "Yes, she does, and she would like a cup of tea and some of that history as well." Backstepping toward the table she began paging through the copies of the appraisals as Ms. Hastings, with a glance at her watch to reassure herself that indulging in a few minutes of gossip wouldn't interfere with her schedule of keeping the president's schedule, left with a flourish of skirt, which hinted that underneath the sober dress suit beat the heart of a local historian or someone who, despite her adherence to schedules, appreciated a break from them._

_The coffee was surprisingly good. "He's the president," Rosemary said, with a sigh that was supposed to say it all. Then, as if unsure that her sigh really had said it all, she added, "If he wants a gourmet mix, he gets one." They were on a first name basis now. Partly it was the coffee (the tea, unfortunately, was a Lipton teabag), and partly that it was hard to gossip, even if it were only about people long dead, when formality was the rule. As Helena glowered down into her cup, Rosemary told them that the painting had been a gift by Edgar Merrick to one Amelia Vanderwaal. "There have always been Merricks and Vanderwaals in this area, but Edgar Merrick had been away, attending an art school or apprenticing himself to a painter, until he came back one summer and saw Amelia. The families thought that Edgar was going to marry her, but he left at the end of the summer never to return. Mr. Vanderwaal said family legend had it that Edgar Merrick gave Amelia the painting as a consolation prize of sorts."_

" _Bit of a wanker, wasn't he?" Helena growled, reaching for one of the sandwich cookies that Rosemary had brought into the conference room with her. Her brows still sulkily lowered over her eyes as she bit into the cookie, Myka almost laughed at the contrast of the pouting child with the serious art appraiser Helena had been just a few minutes before._

" _Well, Mr. Vanderwaal thought it was worse than that even. Amelia married another Vanderwaal, a distant cousin, just weeks later and had a baby boy barely six months into the marriage. That little boy was Mr. Vanderwaals's great-great grandfather and, possibly, Edgar Merrick's son."_

_Helena turned in her chair to look at the painting. "He gives her something that he believes is of greater value than what he would be to her as a husband, though I'm sure that was small comfort." She pushed her cup aside and took another cookie. "How seriously did Mr. Vanderwaal believe he was a descendant of Edgar Merrick? I can imagine that if you're Professor Friedlander and asked by a member of one of the founding families here, a trustee of the university no less, to appraise one of his paintings, a reputed Merrick . . . ."_

_Rosemary was amused, not offended. "I think Mr. Vanderwaal wanted to believe it, but there was no way to prove it. Scratch a Merrick and find a Vanderwaal and vice versa. There was so much intermarriage between the families that I'm sure a DNA test would have shown there was some relation but that it was Edgar Merrick?" She shrugged. "Professor Friedlander wouldn't have been influenced by any family stories or by Larry Vanderwaal. If you had known him, you'd realize the truth of what I'm saying. He was prickly at the best of times."_

" _From what I've read so far," Helena said musingly, "he thought there was a quality to the light in the painting that Merrick never stopped repeating. Even in his later work, it's still there, sunlight as filtered through haze or mist. He captures it in a manner . . . ." Her shrug, unlike Rosemary's, was more of an embarrassed hunching of her shoulders, a rare display of self-consciousness. "At any rate, Professor Friedlander thought that it alone powerfully argued for the painting to be called a Merrick."_

" _I wouldn't know about that," Rosemary said, "but Mr. Vanderwaal said the family believed it was a Merrick because if you look at it just right, you can see her name in it everywhere."_

_Helena exhaled loudly, derisively, her dismissal of the theory clear. "Ridiculous," she said for good measure._

" _I didn't say it was true," Rosemary said, "only what the Vanderwaals think." A phone started ringing in the outer suite and she went to answer it with an apologetic "Duty is literally calling."_

_Helena returned to her reading of the appraisals, but Myka stared at the painting, her eyes tracing its rounded shapes, the bulbous tops of the trees, the undulating line of the hills in the background, and the gentle slopes of the hills in the foreground, creating and cradling the valley at the center of the canvas. She didn't spring from her chair, but the sudden motion startled Helena, who crossly gathered the pages of the appraisals closer to her. With her finger not quite touching the paint, Myka traced what had come to life for her in the landscape. Helena had put aside the appraisals to join her in front of the stand but only to issue another scornful huff. "You can't be taking that nonsense about her name being in the painting seriously."_

" _Not her full name, but a's and v's. Look at how plump those hills are, like small case a's resting on their backs. And that valley, I mean -"_

" _Next you'll be saying the hills look like breasts and we're supposed to take the valley as a vagina," Helena impatiently cut her off. "He may not be a giant among American painters but to think he was -"_

" _Young and painting this not for the future but for her. His version of a love letter? Just because he abandoned her, just because he was a wanker, as you called him, didn't mean he didn't love her."_

" _Only not wisely or well." Helena's expression was . . . baffled. Myka couldn't remember having baffled her before, and she wasn't sure if she was pleased or unsettled by the realization. The dark brows were perilously close to hovering over Helena's nose again. "You're not one to defend the scoundrels of the world, you know."_

_How many times had Amelia Vanderwaal wanted to throw the painting into the fire or take an axe to it? But she hadn't. Maybe she thought it was her child's birthright. Maybe she hadn't wanted to reduce what she and Merrick had been to each other, what any two people could be to each other, to victim and victimizer. Maybe she had thought it was pretty. "If I didn't believe that we were more than predator and prey, that life was more than a contest, I couldn't do this job for very long. We may not be able to change who we are, fundamentally, but we can always be more than we are, if just for a moment." Myka flushed as she said it. That was as much of a philosophy of life as she had ever articulated, and she had chosen to tell it to this woman, who, if she wasn't a scoundrel herself, had been raised by a family of them._

_Helena's confusion deepened then disappeared, replaced by a smile, which, if not quite smug, suggested that she knew a secret you didn't. "If you weren't, fundamentally," she said with ironic emphasis, "a good person, Myka Bering, you would be a devastatingly successful con artist."_

The drone of Chris Jeffries's voice bore unrelentingly through Myka's head. His eyes were glued to a spot on the conference table halfway between its edge and its center. His only movement was to occasionally sip from a glass of water as the agency's attorneys led him through what Myka could only numbly call - having listened to that drone for almost an hour - the daily log of his and DeWitt's friendship. Laura's stare, equally as fixed as her husband's, had turned glassy, the hostility long since faded into resignation, as if she had realized that making the right decision more often resulted in misery than joy. Roget also seemed to focus on something other than his client's confession, perhaps because Chris routinely ignored his whispered guidance and answered even the questions to which he had objected. Roget was taking notes, but only sporadically; most of the time, he was playing with his pen, which was slim, gold, and expensive. Although Helena might not be needed at this stage of the investigation, which Myka understood was the agency's way of limiting, where they could, Helena's access to information and to anything else she might later use for her own purposes, and not unjustified, Myka could admit, her uneasiness was beginning to edge into worry the longer Chris's interrogation went on and Helena was nowhere in sight.

" . . . it was Bryce's idea to steal the jewels." Chris's hand shot out for the glass of water. Everything had been DeWitt's idea so far, which, coming from other criminals, would be an attempt to deny responsibility, but in this particular situation was likely the truth. After his usual two sips and his automatic patting of his mouth with one of the cocktail napkins from the tray that held the carafe of water, Chris said, "Bryce described it as a prank. He'd slip up to the hosts' bedroom during a fundraiser, party, charity event or whatever it was and take what he could find. Alex and I thought he would give the stuff back."

Pete frowned. "That doesn't explain the insurance claims that you and Alex McCrossan made."

Chris reddened. "Those weren't pranks. We got the idea, Alex and I, from what Bryce had been doing. Bryce said he knew a fence that could sell the jewelry, and he explained how we could file the claim without raising suspicion." He slid a glance at his wife; Laura refused to meet it. "Laura had some jewelry she never wore, ugly but expensive stuff she inherited from her grandmother. I knew she'd wouldn't miss it for a while." Laura didn't fail to give him a disgusted look. She had been sleeping with Bryce all along, Myka thought, but she took exception to her husband stealing from her. "The other thefts," he revolved the glass between his hands, "I can't tell you whether the guys were working with Bryce or not. They might have been. We knew some of them from Barrington."

The agency's attorneys were restless. They didn't care about the thefts. "Tell us about the Cadet Scholarship Fund."

_It all came together quickly after they left the executive offices and the mistaken Merrick, or so Myka would think in retrospect. But it hadn't been quite that immediate. First Helena had had to read through the Bellamy Consulting appraisal, multiple times. On her third rereading, which had happened in her hotel room where they convened to go over all the information they had managed to collect, Helena called Joshua Donovan. "Everything on Bellamy Consulting, every single job they've done, absolutely everything. And any connection between Alex Hobart and Lawrence Vanderwaal's youngest daughter, Katie." Joshua had protested, claiming, with no change in the volume or tenor of his voice, that he had competing responsibilities. Helena had told him brusquely, "Make this your first priority."_

_Myka, who had been reading through Lawrence Vanderwaal's will, warned her, "We'll have to justify to Bates any additional 'resources.'"_

" _He'll be glad to pay it," Helena said confidently._

" _Bates is never glad about anything."_

_Helena grimaced. "The only person less deserving of a position of authority in that office than Bates is your partner." At Myka's firmly disapproving shake of her head, she said, "Someday, Myka, you'll be running the show, and both performance and morale will be the better for it." Since Helena's prediction only put into words a desire that had been steadily growing since she had finished training, Myka could do nothing more than shake her head again, this time in disbelief that was possibly less sincere than it should have been._

" _Let's put together what we think is going on with the painting," she said with a business-like crispness that was attempting to compensate for the fantasy she had momentarily indulged in - of sitting behind the desk in Bates's office and working through assignments, Pete and the other agents exchanging jokes, at a respectful volume – and distance, about how tough the new boss was showing herself to be while Helena boldly perched on the end of the desk, daring Myka to give her her worst._ _The_ _worst, the worst of assignments, a correction Myka sent flying after her fantasy. With a sidelong glance that suggested she knew exactly what had been going through Myka's mind, down to the too-short-to-be-professional skirt and stiletto heels in which Myka had clothed her, Helena began to describe the outline of their case._

_Because that's what Helena believed they had, not a university counsel's overreaction to an appraisal he didn't like that devalued a gift by several hundred thousand dollars. In her view, Mr. Stoddard had tumbled to a con to steal a Merrick from the university. But it's not a Merrick, Myka had pointed out to her on their way back to the hotel. That's precisely what they want you and everyone else to think, Helena had said. Now as they sat around the table again, this time the remains of their lunch spread across it (Subway rather than McDonald's since it had been Myka's choice), Helena explained what had first roused her suspicions._

" _Hobart's hair, its cultivated shagginess." She sniffed in disdain and broke off a piece of the chocolate chip cookie that Myka had virtuously refused to share, popping it into her mouth. At Myka's rolling of her eyes, she said, tucking the masticated bite of cookie into her cheek with a deftness that rivaled Pete's though she would have been loath to admit it, "Fine, but you have to admit his hair screams untrustworthiness." Sobering and swallowing the bite, she explained, "Friedlander was an acknowledged Merrick expert. Bellamy Consulting? I'd never heard of it, and this is a very small world of practitioners, Myka. If the university wanted a second opinion on the Merrick, why didn't it ask Marilyn Dixon at UCLA? She's written a lot on Merrick and his contemporaries. We don't have any proof yet that there's any 'untoward' relationship between Hobart and Bellamy, but it seems clear that he was involved in the decision to hire the company, and it's clear he didn't approve of Stoddard's bringing in of the FBI."_

" _He wouldn't be the first professor not to like the FBI," Myka mildly objected._

" _I don't like the FBI," Helena grumbled. Idly breaking off more of the cookie, she said, "It's unlikely Hobart would be working alone. He would need someone at Bellamy Consulting, if the company itself isn't a front, and he would need someone here. Who would have the most to gain, potentially, if the university determined that its Merrick wasn't a Merrick?"_

" _A Vanderwaal," Myka answered._

" _Exactly. So I went to the hotbed of gossip here, the Dorchester Café, this morning, hoping for some salacious tales about the Vanderwaal family." The smile she shone on Myka wasn't the one that had a secret at its center but one that was wide and unafraid to announce how pleased with herself she was. "Amazing how even people distrustful of 'foreigners' of any stripe become chatty if you play up to how smart they think they are." Myka thought, but didn't say, that Helena was a particularly lovely "foreigner." What man holding court in a corner booth wouldn't be flattered by having those dark eyes, enticingly canted over those diamond-sharp cheekbones, following his every gesture? Apparently no man had been immune to her charm, as several of the regulars had been eager to volunteer their opinions of the Vanderwaal family. While Lawrence Vanderwaal and his first wife were "stand-up people who gave back to Dorchester," their children and, in particular, his daughter Katie from an unfortunate second marriage with a much younger woman, were "spoiled brats who didn't know how good they had it." Whereas the older children had had the sense to save the worst of their bad behavior for places far away from Larry Vanderwaal's disapproving eyes, Katie was unembarrassed to be arrested time and again by the sheriff's office for driving under the influence, shoplifting, and possession of illegal substances, among other crimes. Eventually her father had banished her to California and a succession of rehab centers._

" _Sometimes parents like to punish their children from beyond the grave. That's why I wanted to see Lawrence Vanderwaal's will. If he had cut any of his children out, they would have a motive to want to claw back an asset they believe should have been theirs."_

_Despite any disappointment he might have felt about how his children had turned out, Vanderwaal had divided the bulk of his fortune among them, that is, his four oldest. As for Katie, he had directed that the much slenderer share given to her be held in trust and its income distributed to her at the direction of the trustee, rebuking her for behaviors that "exhausted both my patience and what would have been your equal portion of my estate." Myka had read the words, thinking that if her father had had Lawrence Vanderwaal's money . . . he wouldn't have been Warren Bering. If it hadn't been for his bum knee, her father could have been an Olympic skier. If it hadn't been for his family, he could have been a famous novelist, novelist period. If it hadn't been for any number of things that weren't his fault or out of his control, he wouldn't have spent more than 20 years eking a living from a dilapidated bookstore. Sometimes it wasn't just about making the best of an opportunity, it was about creating one for yourself in the first place, a lesson that her father had never learned. But she had learned it, reading those Russian doorstoppers during lunch and working through trigonometry problems at night, and she had been awarded a full scholarship to the University of Colorado as a result. By pushing herself even harder, she had gotten a practically free ride to law school and then, by treating the application process for the FBI as a year-long exam, she had earned a slot in the agency's training program. No one understood better what a goad paternal disapproval could be. "I get her wanting to give her dad the finger, but there's no connection between Katie and Hobart."_

" _Or between Hobart and Bellamy Consulting. That's what I'm hoping Joshua will find." Helena blew out a long, frustrated breath. "Otherwise all we have is Bellamy's appraisal, which is riddled with factual errors and presents, overall, a less compelling argument that the Merrick isn't a Merrick, but I doubt that it will be enough to persuade a skittish administration not to sell the painting back to the family."_

" _What's Bellamy's argument for believing that the Merrick isn't a Merrick?"_

" _Supposedly they performed a chemical analysis of the paint and the canvas and determined that both are of a later date than when Merrick is thought to have finished the painting. Plus, an x-ray analysis shows that there's an underlying painting, a painting that's clearly not a Merrick, or so they claim." Helena crumbled more of her cookie. "Utter nonsense, but some people would find it persuasive. It's brimming with equations and copies of the x-rays showing the outlines of the earlier painting. There's nothing like a bit of conjured science to pull the wool over the eyes of the wisest of us," Helena finished dryly._

_They both intently looked at Helena's phone, willing it to ring. "Joshua," Helena said to the air, "now would be a very good time to call."_

_Unfortunately it was Myka's phone that rang first. At first, she thought it was Bates wanting an update, but it was worse than that. A Wall Street titan had returned from a family vacation in New Zealand to discover that his private art collection had been stolen. "We need her," Bates growled, "and you," he added as if in afterthought. "You need to wrap up what you're doing in Dorchester and get back here asap." Myka's urging for more time, a day or two at most, earned her an irritable silence and Bates's icy "If you can't get the case closed tomorrow morning, you'll have to put it on hold until we get things in order here. The theft has priority."_

_The news of art worth millions of dollars having suddenly disappeared didn't excite Helena. "If this 'titan' is who I think it is, he's about to be investigated by the SEC for insider trading. The art isn't stolen. He's had it removed while he was out of the country so it can't be seized," she said sourly. She and Myka stared at each other. "If we have to leave now, Hobart will take this . . . reprieve . . . to press the university to go forward with the sale of the painting back to the Vanderwaals, in other words, back to Katie. And a few weeks from now, a month or two at most, she'll have a new appraisal done and what wasn't a Merrick will be a Merrick once more. She'll sell it and not only have a million dollars to play with, minus the cut to Hobart and his associates, of course, but she'll also have the satisfaction of having given the finger, as you said, to dear old Dad."_

" _Do you always know the ending in advance?" Myka couldn't resist poking at her a little, although she knew that Helena's prediction about the painting's future was probably accurate. She would reserve judgment, however, about the prediction concerning the whereabouts of the Wall Street titan's collection._

" _Not always," Helena said, her eyes locked onto Myka's. "Sometimes someone surprises me."_

The Cadet Scholarship Fund wasn't - it hadn't started out as a scam. Chris Jeffries had winced as he amended his words. They had been sincere in their desire to make Barrington's advantages more available, especially to students who possessed everything the school wanted, except money. Yes, Bryce had been the one to file all the necessary paperwork, but he had encouraged them to have their attorneys review it, make sure they were okay with it, Chris explained, his monotone sharpening into the complaint that Myka was used to hearing from criminals, the aggrieved whine that implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, accused the agency of a miscarriage of justice. And yes, he and Alex had had their attorneys review it, and no one raised any issues, not about the fund and not about Bryce's greater administrative powers. The three of them had covered the minimal administrative fees because every dollar they collected was going toward funding scholarships. They met regularly to review applications, rank them, and, eventually, select the winners. Here Chris's complaint faltered and the whine of his self-righteousness wound down to a mutter; the monotone in which he had been delivering his confession resumed. Not long after the fund was established, maybe a year, maybe less, he and Alex had had a temporary but severe cash flow problem. Investments that had seemed sure bets, as sure, anyway, as betting on the financial markets could be, had gone south, and they were badly overextended. Bryce had suggested that they could temporarily borrow from the scholarship fund. With some accounting sleight of hand, they could move the money and, afterward, when they were in a better position, they could transfer money back into the fund. No one would be hurt, Bryce had assured them. They weren't actually taking money away from anyone, they were being more deliberative, yes, deliberative about the students who were going to receive the scholarships, and they would pay every penny back. Besides, their donors were getting their tax deductions for the gifts, so who was there to care?

As Chris continued, his voice becoming flatter with every dip the three of them made into the fund, Myka found that the only thing in the room she could focus on was the door and the fact that she didn't know where, on the other side of it, Helena was. Imagining her taking a letter opener from an agent's desk and prying open her ankle monitor and then sauntering out of the office made her smile slightly to herself, but it did nothing to combat her unease, which had been growing more urgent the longer she sat listening to a confession she had heard dozens of times before. Regardless of whether the cons had been large or small, they had always been reduced to this, someone in a chair trying to explain why he had done it, and she had always come to the same conclusion, which was that there could never be explanation enough. So when the explanation failed to justify the damage that the sullen or sobbing person in the chair had caused, what did she do? She kept taking notes, kept building her case because that was her job and her job was her all. Snakes ate mice, and she would keep documenting that simple unlovely truth until the agency pushed her into retirement. But not today.

As quietly as she could, she pushed back her chair and, giving the table a wide berth, walked to the door. No one looked up or away from Chris Jeffries except Pete, who grinned at her, having forgiven her for the disaster she had almost visited upon the team, and Laura Jeffries, who didn't grin at her and whose accusatory glare followed her out of the room. Laura would learn that the adage, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," was more wish fulfillment than truth. What doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger (or smarter or better); sometimes all you're left with is the numbed realization that what didn't kill you still came pretty damn close.

But that despairing reflection, which had come to her time and again over the past eight years, didn't feel right today. Perhaps Helena's saving of the case had affected her too, or maybe she was conceding that having been assigned as Helena's watchdog and enforcer rolled into one hadn't been the second worst experience of her life, at least not yet. Myka checked her cubicle, half-expecting to see Helena in her chair talking to Christina or Jemma, but it was empty. Operating on the same theory, she checked Steve's, and even Jennifer's and Lee's. She swept through the ladies room and peered into the conference rooms. She double checked her phone. There were no frantic messages or calls from Parker. While Helena might be stabbing at her ankle monitor with a purloined letter opener this very minute, she hadn't been so successful that she had raised any alarms. Yet acknowledging how unlikely it was that Helena had chosen to flee both the physical and legal shackles of the agency now, today, didn't stop Myka's shirt from sticking to her chest or her back from beading with sweat. She raced through the scanners at the entrance to the suite, heedless of the alarms and the startled exclamations behind her. Wildly waving her credential to excuse her rush, she plunged into the corridor outside the suite, intending to run down the escalator to see if Helena had stopped into the coffee shop for a cup of tea before she made her getaway, when she glanced at the bank of windows that formed the opposing wall. They looked onto the small, shared courtyard, and there at the very far end, which provided a view of only another office tower's bank of windows, stood Helena, her arms wrapped around her chest as if she were shivering from the cold, on a humid, 90 degree day.

Myka placed her hands on one of the doors set in the glass. She remembered hesitating like this before she had opened the door to Helena's loft the day after the Marston Gallery heist was discovered. It had been late, past midnight, because the office had been in an uproar, news of the heist consuming it, the Houston field office already reaching out to Bates, asking for Helena's expertise. She, Bates, Pete, everyone had left voice mails that Helena hadn't yet returned. Myka hadn't volunteered that she hadn't heard from Helena in over four days, because even though it was a poorly kept secret, her and Helena, Bates hadn't yet asked her if she knew where her girlfriend was. But he would tomorrow. She knew it, just as she had known before she put her key in the lock, flicked on the lights, saw that everything was where she had left it in the morning, that it was no coincidence, Helena's business trip and the Marston Gallery theft. She hesitated because she had known as soon as she crossed the threshold that what looked the same would never be the same again. She would be exchanging one world for another, and in this new world that Helena had created for her, she would never find her place.

She had the same feeling now as she had then, that once she opened the door and stepped into the courtyard, she would be entering yet another world, different from both the one that had existed before Helena's betrayal and the one that had come into being after it. She wouldn't find here the Helena she had loved and the Helena she had hated, they had their own realms to rule; this Helena was more human-sized and more uncertain than her predecessors, lost as she had been lost, burned as she had been burned. She didn't have to open the door, Myka counseled herself. She could return to the suite, apologize to the security staff, retake her seat, and simply wait for Helena to saunter in. Which Helena would, she wasn't running anywhere today. Myka didn't like the world she had (barely) inhabited the past eight years, but it was familiar and had little power to hurt her. Any world with a Helena in it who said she loved her was an intolerable risk.

She had clung to her job and she had hoped, for a time, that her marriage would settle her. But she hadn't protested when Sam divorced her and if she were honest, she would admit that her panic on Saturday and her near-panic today hadn't been about Helena fleeing the agency and an agreement she had never had any intention of honoring but about Helena leaving her behind. Again. Her tether was standing, no, pacing now in the courtyard, one arm, however, still listlessly curled around her waist and her shoulders slightly hunched, as if she were expecting a blast of glacial air to come roaring through the spaces between the office buildings.

Myka opened the door.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Helena continued pacing, her expression a grim study, and when she turned and glimpsed Myka coming through the doors, she blanched, which made that pale complexion, the white of lab coats and latex gloves and hospital beds, stark and foreboding. Her apprehension touched Myka, who had stepped onto the terrace her mind still filled with the breezily confident Helena of the earliest days of their partnership. Just as she wasn't the same, this wasn't the same Helena, both the breeziness and the confidence diminished. If Helena's betrayal of her had reduced both the goofy joy and the frequency of her smiles, encouraged her tendency to over-exercise and skip meals, which, in eight years' time, had hardened her natural leanness into a type of armor, it had aged Helena as well. Those canted eyes were more hooded, the lines around her mouth tugging down rather than up. Eight years ago, Helena wouldn't have been huddled in on herself, as if she were waiting for the guards' permission to return to her cell.

And yet . . . Helena's despair, complete with dramatically flying hair and an anguished look, made her such the picture of Christina during a time-out that Myka couldn't entirely smother a laugh. Not the most appropriate response as the tense set of Helena's jaw became more pronounced and her agitation solidified into anger, yet Myka still wanted to offer her some apple or banana slices dipped in Nutella, much like Jemma would do when Christina was released from her time-out. "What?" Helena demanded roughly. "I handed the Jeffrieses to you on a silver platter. Don't tell me that the trained monkey and his crew managed to screw it up?" Her outrage quickly subsided and, turning her face her face away, she said in a tone that was as bleak as it was penitent, "You, you handed them on a silver platter to your so-called superiors. If you hadn't said what you did to Laura, they'd already be halfway home, and DeWitt halfway to one of the countries that doesn't have an extradition agreement with us." Her voice dropping lower, she said, "I heard it, and I saw it, what I had done to you. More than that, I felt it. Remorse is a con artist's kryptonite, Myka."

Myka let another bubble of inappropriate laughter break through her words. "Don't grow a conscience on me now. We can't afford it."

" _Bates, he didn't say what time tomorrow, did he?" Helena gathered together the sandwich wrappers, crushing them, and stuffing them with more force than necessary into the wastebasket. "I have to give Joshua as much time as possible. In the meantime . . . ." She pursed her lips in concentration, then gave Myka a sideways look that was sly and conspiratorial, even devilish if Myka were inclined to think that way, which she shouldn't be because she had a boyfriend, of sorts, and more to the point, their case was collapsing. "Let's go rattle some cages, shall we?"_

_They drove back to the university, with Helena at the wheel. She took the corners a little too fast and she bulldozed through intersections that had no traffic signs of any kind, apparently expecting all who crossed her path to yield. Unsurprising, Myka thought, trying not to dig her fingers into the door handle. They parked in the same visitors' lot, but instead of heading in the direction of the administration building, Helena veered off on a narrow, crumbling sidewalk that wound down a slope to yet another charmingly ivy-covered brick building. Students were exiting through the main doors, some carrying sketch pads and others displaying daubs of paint and charcoal on their clothes._

" _We're going to rattle Hobart's cage?" Myka tugged Helena into the grass bordering the sidewalk, still a vibrant green this deep into the fall._

_Helena spread her arms in frustration. "I'd prefer to rattle Katie Vanderwaal's, but Hobart's the one who's here. Since I have no idea when Joshua will call or what he'll have, we'll need to stir things up on our own. Care to run a minor con with me?" She stared steadily into Myka's eyes._

" _There are rules, Helena," she said warningly, although the longer those eyes stared into hers, the more Myka could feel herself weakening. She wasn't sure how much of it stemmed from her reluctance to give up on an investigation - Helena was probably right about the Merrick being turned over to the family once they returned to New York - and how much from an apparently unsatisfied adolescent yearning to do something reckless, something that might get her into trouble. Her friends, her boyfriends, Rachel, they had all been versions of her, the only outsized thing about them being their ambition._

" _Which you'll let me bend but not break. You'll pull me back." For a moment, Myka thought Helena leaned into the space between them, not to kiss her but to cup her face or tuck that sleek, dark head under a chin that Myka thought might be trembling. Because it would be so much more intimate than a kiss to have Helena show that she trusted her. That was really the allure of being reckless. You couldn't trust that you were going to come out all right, but you could trust that she would be right in it with you. Myka closed her eyes against the sudden dizziness, and when she opened them, Helena was disappearing into the building._

Definitely not the same Helena. Myka took Helena's hand and led her to a bench molded from the same concrete that preserved a small square of scrubby grass and a tree laboring to grow in the middle of it. Helena didn't let go of her hand, but she didn't look at her either as they sat down, looking instead at the office tower opposite them. "We have Nate Burdette to deal with yet, and he's far more dangerous than Chris Jeffries." Helena didn't respond, and Myka reflected that the problem with relying on symbolic gestures like opening doors was what to do once you went through them. While she hadn't thought she would rush out onto the terrace and whirl around for joy like Julie Andrews in _The Sound of Music_ , she had had some confidence that she knew what she was going to say when Helena saw her. She had rejected Helena's guilt because it didn't belong in this new . . . New. Neither did her own numbness. But what did?

Haltingly, she said, "If you're expecting me to tell you that I still hate you after all these years, I can't do that. Hate and love, I don't even know what they mean when it comes to you. Not anymore." She sucked in a breath. "I'm trying, I want -"

But Helena interrupted her, words spilling from her, announcing the resolutions she must have made as she paced the terrace from end to end. "I'm going to have Lattimer take you off this case, Myka. Steve or Lee or Jennifer can be my 'handler,' or he can send me back to prison." Her laugh was hard-edged and wild. "I'm sure Ben is meeting with his father's battery of attorneys as we speak. He'll get custody of Christina, and Jemma'll be lucky if she gets an afternoon a month with her. The silver lining is that Nate won't dare touch her if she's in the bosom of the Winslow family." Calming herself, she squeezed Myka's hand so hard that Myka bit her lip but didn't protest. "Things do have a way of working out. This partnership was never going to succeed. There's just too much between us. Once you're out of it, you won't have to think about Nate or me or anything having to do with a Wells. It's over." She kept squeezing Myka's hand, but when she turned her eyes to Myka's, they were dry. "It's over."

Myka wondered if Helena was hoping she would concede that here was a Wells trying to do the right thing, perhaps even characterize it as a noble gesture, believing that Helena loved her enough to set her free. It wasn't as hard as it once might have been for her to believe something like that, but she could just as easily believe that Helena had learned nothing in eight years, still treating her as a minor character in the greater drama of her own life. The old suspiciousness hadn't completely died either. It wasn't much of a stretch for her, Myka admitted, to believe that Helena's willingness to let her go was a ploy only to reel her all the more surely in, a necessary step in the con Helena had been planning since Justice and the FBI had opened her prison doors. Myka knew she could wholeheartedly believe any one of those possibilities because Helena was equally capable of all of them. But looking into the dark eyes that at times seemed to swallow her whole, she didn't see the felon or the lover who had betrayed her, she saw the child promising that she would do whatever it took, be whoever it was necessary to become to win back her father's love. All those Helenas springing from one simple promise: never to disappoint him again. If a doesn't work, try b and c and d and e and f . . . . Never run out of options and don't please him for the moment. Anticipate what he wants next and deliver it. Helena had fallen back on her default mode - identify the mark's dearest wish and make her believe it can come true.

"Is that what you think I want?" Myka didn't look away.

"You should." Helena glanced down at their joined hands and tried to loosen the hold. Myka only squeezed their fingers tighter together. Helena smiled slightly, sadly at the white-knuckled grip. "If we succeed in giving them Nate, do you think your bosses are going to reward you? They'll save their accolades for your buffoonish ex-partner. He'll advance while you'll get their begrudging acknowledgment that you didn't make a bloody mess of it this time. And as for your Neanderthal - "

"Ex-Neanderthal," Myka interrupted.

Helena's smile was a little less sad. "That's one step in the right direction. But if you're seeking in me the Helena you fell in love with -"

"She wasn't a fabrication," Myka interrupted again. "She just wasn't the only Helena there was." She held her breath for a second, steadied herself, then let it out. "Every time I'm with you and Christina, I see what could have been. But it's not only what could have been, it's also what could be. It's both. It's been so long since I imagined what my life could be like, really imagined it, let myself dream and hope, that I didn't realize I'd begun to stop mourning the past. Yes, you're a constant reminder, Helena, of the worst moments of my life, but you and Christina also make me want to put all that behind me. You want a world in which dolphins can exist? I'm your fucking dolphin, Helena. I'm still out there." She ended raggedly, aware of how damp their interlocked hands had become. She worked her fingers from Helena's, but Helena's hand moved to rest on Myka's thigh, so lightly that Myka could barely feel it through the summer-weight weave of her pants and close enough to her knee that she wouldn't jump to the wrong conclusion about what it meant.

"I suppose you'll say what we have is a work-in-progress. If I ask you whether you'll ever fully trust me, you'll tell me that you're learning how to trust all over again. If I ask you whether you can love me like you used to, you'll tell me you'll love me as much as you can. You'll be 'One day at a time" and "Let's see where we're at.'" Helena's tone was sardonic but not reproachful. If anything, it carried a note of sympathy, as if she were in perfect agreement about the burden of loving Helena Wells. "My bold words to the contrary, I'll take however much of you I can get." Her hand began kneading Myka's muscle, abstractedly, ruminatively, claws retracted. "But Christina deserves more. I'll have to answer someday for how poorly I've mothered her, but I'm not going to let another person into her life who's going to fail her. There are no maybe's, no possibly's with her. You're 100 percent in the present with her, no regrets, or there is no putting the past behind you. Not with us."

_Alex Hobart hadn't been happy to see them when they entered the studio on the main floor. He had been standing with one of his students in front of an easel, pointing out the errors in her drawing of a skyline that vaguely resembled New York's. The student hadn't seemed to mind the criticism, her gaze wholly, dreamily fixed on the disordered mane of his hair that the hand that wasn't gesturing at the clumsiness of the perspective was restlessly finger-combing. She was blond and pretty, and when he reluctantly agreed to Myka's request for a private conversation to "clear up a few matters," she had reclaimed her sketch pad with a suggestive smile and an invitation to join her and some of the other students at Bedell's for happy hour. Divining the direction of Myka's thoughts or, more likely, unable to miss the smirk on Helena's face, he had said irritably, "I can spare you 15 minutes, and then I have an appointment I have to make - and it doesn't involve undergrads and 2-for-1 drinks."_

_The irritability didn't diminish when they followed him upstairs to his office and Helena, rather than taking the chair he offered her, wandered the narrow confines of the room, commenting on the framed artwork on the walls ("Some of it's mine, others are the work of friends and my more talented students," he said curtly) and picking up the objects on his desk - stress-relieving squeeze balls, worry beads, a Rubik's cube, scratch pads filled with doodles. "If you're ready," he said impatiently as Helena languidly sat down._

" _I used to wear rubber bands on my wrists," she volunteered. He stared at her with a mix of confusion and exasperation. "You used to smoke, right? So did I, and I snapped a rubber band against my wrist every time I thought about a cigarette."_

_He shrugged. "I'm fidgety by nature. I stopped smoking a long time ago."_

_Myka struggled not to show her surprise. Helena had never once indicated that she used to smoke, and Myka had a hard time believing that she would resort to anything remotely painful in order to break a bad habit. This was headed not just in a direction Myka hadn't anticipated but in a direction that she was certain Helena hadn't intended - until they had entered this room. Helena seemed to accept his response as a suitable answer, nodding in agreement. "I was wondering how you met Katie Vanderwaal." She vaguely pointed toward the corners of the room. "This tells me what I need to know."_

_Hobart stiffened, his impatience giving way to wariness. "You find a Vanderwaal everywhere you look on this campus or in this town. I've met all of Larry Vanderwaal's children at one event or another. That's the extent of my relationship with Katie Vanderwaal." He drew up his leg, resting the ankle on the opposite knee. The crossed leg started to bounce up and down. "Why are you talking about Katie? How is she important?"_

" _She's important because you know her much better and for far longer than you're willing to admit," Helena said calmly. "I'd been thinking she was one of the students you'd slept with." She shook her head as Hobart lunged forward in his chair to object. "Of course you were unfairly dismissed by your former employer. How were you to know they were students?" The mockery died away and she was silent, pretending to think over the claims she was making. "It didn't feel right to me, that Katie was a student of yours. She's too old to be a recent undergraduate conquest, and I couldn't see you concocting a scheme to defraud a university with a girl you had screwed in the parking lot of a campus bar." Hobart's leg stopped bouncing. He had grown very still, his eyes not moving from Helena. Myka was certain that he was no longer aware that she was in the room. Helena leaned across the space between her chair and the desk to pick up one of the balls. They could have touched noses, but Hobart, though trembling with the effort not to retreat even so much as an inch, wasn't ready to surrender. She rhythmically squeezed the ball, smiling cockily at him. "You met her in rehab. Maybe you were a fellow addict, maybe you were a recovering addict providing art therapy for the patients, but you met her there," she twisted in her chair, pointing to a painting of a mansion so large and so festooned with turrets and towers and arches that Myka thought it had to be an architect's spoof of a castle. "It rivals the Hearst Castle but it's not nearly as well known. It's called the Harrington Clinic, and it's located outside San Diego." Helena had said the last for her benefit, Myka realized. "I've always loved architectural monstrosities, and the old Harrington estate is one of my favorites. I'd recognize it no matter how badly it's drawn."_

" _You're way out on a limb, Agent Wells," Hobart said evenly, "be careful."_

" _Worse, a tightrope," Helena said cheerfully, "but I've wonderful balance, Professor Hobart. Can you say the same for Katie? We've been watching her. She's already been spending the money she thinks she'll realize from the sale of the Merrick. Now that Daddy's no longer alive to see that she stays clean . . . . When we start to question her, how long before she gives you up?"_

_Hobart's posture had changed. That was the first thing Myka noticed, and she felt the telltale sign of alarm, a sudden heat between her breasts that promised to blossom into sweat. He was sitting back in his chair, and while his eyes remain fixed on Helena, they had narrowed, as if he were thinking over all that she had said and seeking its flaws. She had claimed too much, and he sensed the overreach. "Surveilling her because she's an addict? That's all you have? Doesn't seem like a good use of a government agency's resources. Are you going to get a search warrant for her house for a few grams of cocaine? What do you have to pressure Katie Vanderwaal with?"_

_Hobart was right, and Myka felt her shirt beginning to stick to her in places. Helena's cocky smile was still in place, but there was something immobile about it. Fearing that she might insist on the FBI's unlimited powers of surveillance and interrogation, not to mention its prescience in identifying Katie as the weak link, Myka jumped in, at first to just to draw Hobart's attention away from Helena, hoping to find the most credible method of walking back from some of her claims. Whether it was true that Hobart and Katie had met at a rehab clinic wasn't as important as the fact that they didn't have the time to prove it. There was rattling his cage and then there was sticking their heads in his mouth. "Katie's an important element, and we will talk to her, but there are other factors we have to consider as well."_

_He was listening to her, he was even looking at her. Sort of. Every few seconds, he was glancing at his door. He was on the verge of throwing them out. He had sniffed out their con and he was calling their bluff. She was the cautious one, she was the one who was trying to save them some remnant of their dignity. Helena relied on her to pull them back to safety. But she really hated being dismissed. It was her father deciding from practically the day she was born that she was never going to measure up, the popular kids in high school always pronouncing her name "Meeka" or "Mikka" because she - and her name - weren't worth the effort of getting it right. It was Hobart deciding that she didn't need to be reckoned with._

" _One of those factors is the problematic appraisal by Bellamy Consulting," she said coolly, her suit jacket betraying no sign of the sweat glands warring beneath her skin. "Some of its so-called hard data appears to have been falsified. We've reached out to Marilyn Dixon, a Merrick expert, to review the appraisal. Tomorrow morning we're convening with President Nolan and members of the Vanderwaal family to discuss the status of the investigation." Sometimes never forgetting a name she had heard came in handy. She unclipped her phone and searched for the number of Nolan's office in the call log. "I don't bluff, Professor Hobart."_

_Of course that was exactly what she was doing. She was going farther out on the limb than Helena had dared, but she hated losing almost as much as she hated being dismissed. What was one more humiliating overreach at this point? They didn't have the time to pursue leads or to collect and evaluate evidence. They had only suppositions and guesswork. If they were going to fail, they might as well fail big, and there was still the chance. . . . She set her phone on Hobart's desk, turned the speaker on, and pressed redial._

"I've been thinking about the case in Dorchester," Myka said. "Do you remember it?" Helena had issued an ultimatum and she was talking about an old case. It was worse than a non sequitur, she could see foresee Helena responding to it as if it were proof that, however much she had been professing to the contrary, she remained stuck in the past.

But Helena was slowly nodding. She lifted her hand from Myka's knee to scrape away from her face the hair a persistent breeze kept tugging across her nose and mouth. Hooking the strands behind her ear, she said reflectively, admiringly, "Of course I do. I witnessed one of the best cons I've ever seen anyone pull off, and one of the ballsiest." Her sideways look at Myka was still disbelieving. "How you knew she would back you up . . . . What was her name, Marjorie?"

"Rosemary, another old-fashioned name."

"You saved the day then just as you did today. It's not a surprise that you'd be thinking about it." Helena's expression had lightened, her brows regaining their natural ironic arch, her smile with its secret at its center hovering on her lips. "You saved things today with the truth, but back then? Pure flim-flam."

Myka recalled how startled Rosemary Hastings had sounded answering the phone and how close she had come to choking out the request for confirmation of the meeting. But she had managed to keep her voice steady, even casual, and Rosemary, after a half-second pause, had adeptly filled out the rest of her lie. A breakfast meeting at 8:30, President Nolan's schedule cleared, and Christopher Vanderwaal sitting in for the Vanderwaal family. Myka hadn't known which Vanderwaal served as the family's representative; she had referred to them in the collective, and Rosemary had smoothly clued her in by saying, "Only Christopher's coming, I'm afraid, but since he's the Vanderwaal on the board of trustees, he's the one who should be there." The meeting had, in fact, taken place, a breakfast meeting at 8:30, although it had served mainly to put an official end to the FBI's involvement. The case itself had likely been resolved within 15 minutes of when she and Helena had left Hobart's office.

"It wasn't flim-flam, it wasn't a con." Myka half-turned and pushed the hair away from Helena's face before she could, her fingers lingering on Helena's cheek. It felt both strange and entirely natural to touch her so intimately. "It was throwing a Hail Mary, it was playing the lottery. All I had was hope."

"You think cons don't depend on luck There's a reason they're called con games," Helena challenged but so softly and affectionately as she nuzzled her cheek against Myka's hand that it seemed less an objection than a plea to be convinced.

"It's not the same," Myka said, leaning away and letting her hand drop to Helena's shoulder and then trail lazily down her arm. "I didn't research Rosemary, didn't test her first with something small, didn't file away every little thing that annoyed her or made her happy. I didn't know, we didn't know until the next day just how much she didn't trust Hobart."

"She liked you. You must have sensed it on some level."

As she drew her fingers across Helena's palm, Helena closed her hand over them. There had been something predatory in how quickly and firmly Helena had trapped her fingers, her hand snapping over them like one of those strange lifeforms on the bottom of the ocean, no eyes and all mouth, barely sentient yet capable of seizing its prey in a flash. She might have learned to curb those impulses, but she would never be able to root them out. Was it possible to live with someone like that? A snake could shed its skin a thousand times over, but it remained a snake. What Myka knew with greater certainty was that living without her had been no safer or better for her.

"I knew that I liked you, maybe even more than liked you, and that we had agreed to give the case our best shot in the time we had left. If you were going to go down in flames trying to shake something out of Hobart, you weren't going to go down alone. Being someone's partner means knowing that sometimes you pull them back and sometimes you jump into the fire with them." It had been difficult not to look away from Helena as she said it, not because she found it hard to remember a time when she had trusted her - she had punished herself for it so often over the past eight years that the scar tissue was thick - but because she knew how hard it would be for Helena to hear it. It would be another confirmation of the damage she had done . . . and Myka was tired of being damaged.

Helena didn't let go of Myka's fingers but her head was bowed and her voice unsteady. "I'm not sure I can survive a lifetime of your forbearance. I think I could better suffer your hatred." Her thumb tentatively rubbed across Myka's knuckles. "For what it's worth, that day I wasn't thinking of the Marstons or what I needed to do next to hoodwink the agency. I was thinking only about proving that that awful painting wasn't a fake. We _were_ in it together, Myka. And to watch you risk it all," she sighed girlishly, "I didn't realize it then, but I was gone, completely, irrevocably gone. Oh, I knew something had changed for me that afternoon, but I framed it in the only terms I knew, that I had to have you, that I would have you, and that, afterward, I would move on. It was how I operated and I didn't believe people could relate to each other differently. Get yours and then get out. I was wrong. You had vanquished me and I didn't recognize it until it was much too late." She paused before saying so quietly that she seemed to be whispering to herself, "I was going to end up ruining the both of us. That's when I knew - whether I pulled off the Marston heist or confessed it to you, I wouldn't wriggle away this time. I was caught. Halfway across the world and millions of dollars richer, I still wouldn't be free of you." She laughed, and it surprised her enough to look up and send Myka a startled glance. "Of course I didn't have millions to comfort me. The money that bought the house on the Island, that paid for the defense that couldn't save me from prison, it came from all those 'lost' Jim Wells originals." She let go of Myka's hand and ran her thumbnail down her thigh, creating a seam in the material of her pants. "I knew what I was. Although Edgar Merrick may not have been the most talented artist, his work was his, and I wanted to give him that."

"I haven't been thinking about Dorchester because I played the hero, and I'm not talking about it to punish you, Helena. I've been thinking about it because, by rights, that painting shouldn't have been hanging on a wall to inspire a fraud. It should have had a hole put through it or sold at a rummage sale. It never should have survived. It's not Edgar who's on my mind, it's Amelia."

"I said he was a wanker. You said she must have seen in him more than that." Helena laughed again, although it carried a sour note. "I thought you were wrapped up in some romantic fantasy about that worthless boyfriend of yours. I didn't like him, and that was years before he thought to make my daughter a bargaining chip."

"It was easy then to say that Amelia loved him despite his abandoning of her. But I became her. She should have destroyed that painting a million times over, but she not only kept it, she kept it safe. There were no scratches in the frame, no damage to the canvas. She protected it, Helena. She knew what he was and everything that he wasn't, and she still held onto the painting. Not for their child, he never knew who his biological father was. Not for posterity, she was long dead before a Merrick was worth anything. She kept it because he was important to her. He had left her decades ago, but she held on." Myka could hear her voice rising and she could see that Helena's face was growing paler, but she had eight years' worth of emotion to let out. "You're afraid that I'm going to abandon Christina. A month from now, a year from now, I'll decide it won't work, and I'll leave the two of you without a second thought. But I've been here all along, Helena. I've held on."

"I can't pull free, and you won't let go. We're quite a pair." Helena tipped her head back and stared wide-eyed at the sky. She blinked rapidly. "If I start crying now, I won't stop for another eight years." She lowered her head until her eyes, red-rimmed and wet, met Myka's. "I want to spend the rest of this day with you and my daughter. I want to start there. Can we do that?"

They did that. While Helena perched on the desktop in Myka's cubicle and called Jemma, Myka returned to Pete's office. The agency's attorneys, the Jeffrieses, and their attorney were huddled around one end of the conference table working out the last details of the deal while Pete, Leena, and Steve were awkwardly congregating at Pete's desk. Myka didn't phrase it as a request, she said, with a casualness that was belied by the directness of her look at Pete, that she and Helena were going to spend the rest of the day with Christina. She saw Steve and Leena sidling away, clearly expecting Pete to object, not to the time off she was taking but how she was planning to spend it. But after a significant pause, Pete shrugged and said, "Just remember that she never plays nice."

Myka knew she would have a longer conversation with Pete tomorrow, but today he wanted to savor his victory. His glance flicked from her to the Jeffrieses, and she recognized that he wanted to join the attorneys to make sure that they were hewing to the agreement that management had approved, not the one Ted Roget was hoping to change for the benefit of his clients. No one needed her here, not Pete, not the attorneys, and not the Jeffrieses. Laura hadn't seemed to notice her reappearance, but she didn't miss Myka's attempt to noiselessly slip out of the office. Her eyes didn't blaze the resentment that Myka expected; in fact, they looked at her almost blankly, as if she no longer existed. But Myka understood that look too. Laura wasn't trying to peer into a vastly different future, she couldn't see any future. She had opened a door and nothing recognizable was on the other side of it. There's no other way but through it, Myka silently advised her, but someday, if you're lucky, you'll find the door that leads you out.

There were no wary glances from Christina, nor from Jemma for that matter, when she and Helena entered through the house's side door. While Christina showed some caution climbing down from the stool at the breakfast bar, she didn't wait for her grandmother to assist her, remembering to slow her slide from seat to floor by flinging her good arm behind her. Her hair was tousled and she had the half-sleepy, half-bewildered expression of a child not long from a nap, but she squirmed between them in greeting rather than giving a one-armed hug to her mother's legs. It had only been hours since they had left her and not many at that; it was just past one, yet Myka couldn't shake the ridiculous impression that Christina's hair was longer and that she had grown a couple of inches. Yet she wasn't the only one to have felt it because she heard Helena murmur beside her, "It's different now, isn't it? Her, us."

Jemma said somewhat caustically, "Things must have gone well because you're here," but her expression was pleased, especially when she happened to look at Myka. Helena swung her daughter back onto her stool, burying her face in Christina's hair and kissing her head. Jemma had been making lunch, chicken salad sandwiches, and she put out two more plates. "Would she have come back if things hadn't gone well?" She nodded in Helena's direction.

"I wouldn't have. I would've been given the bum's rush from the agency," Myka said, holding the first of four glasses under the refrigerator's filtered water dispenser.

"You still could've come back, fired or not. It makes no difference to me or Christina where you work. And that one," she nodded again at Helena as she cut a sandwich into triangles for Christina and put it on her plate, "it would be a Christmas gift to her if the agency let you go." Her face turned from them as she went back to the counter where she had set the Tupperware container of chicken salad, Jemma asked with an assumed casualness that wasn't casual at all, "How long are the two of you planning to stay today? I imagine Helena will have to go back to her halfway house."

Myka noted that Helena was needlessly trying to help Christina eat her sandwich, which Christina was managing just fine with her left hand. Chunks of chicken and apple were falling to her plate but that would have happened had she been holding it with both hands. Myka realized she wouldn't be bailed out from having to answer. She had decided to take the risk, she might as well fully own up to it. "We'll be here through tomorrow morning. Helena will have to go back to Mrs. Frederic's tomorrow night." Bringing two glasses of water back to the breakfast bar, Myka couldn't miss the smile Helena shone down at Christina's plate, not secretive but smug. Definitely smug.

Jemma's sole comment was "Good thing I washed the clothes you wore yesterday. You'll have a clean pair of knickers."

They colored in coloring books with Christina, played board games with her, and Myka even wore a tiara for an impromptu playlet that Christina called "I'm a Princess." She and Helena had both changed out of their pantsuits, and this time as Myka moved around Helena's bedroom, carefully folding and packing her jacket and trousers in her overnight bag, she didn't feel quite so out of place. She avoided looking at the bed too much or for too long; she hadn't yet decided what she wanted or when she wanted it. Maybe it was enough that the bed didn't seem ten times too large for the room.

With Christina propped up against her chest as they both lay on the sofa, Myka flicked through channels, looking for something kid-appropriate while Helena and Jemma shared cups of tea at the breakfast bar. She hadn't realized that she had fallen asleep until she felt a touch on her shoulder and the sharp of dig of elbows in her ribs as Christina resisted being disturbed. "Love, let's get you to bed where we can set you up proper," Jemma entreated her granddaughter, crouching in front of them. Christina shook her head, which rubbed painfully against Myka's collarbone. "Leave her be," Helena lazily suggested from the breakfast bar, "Myka's not such a bad pillow."

"When she wakes up in the middle of the night crying, and all because she didn't have a decent rest in the afternoon, you'll be the one who'll attend to her," Jemma grumbled good-naturedly. "And as long as Myka doesn't mind being used as a pillow." She pushed herself up with a hand on the sofa's arm, giving Myka a long look. "You give an inch to that one," she glanced at Christina and then back at Myka, but Myka knew it wasn't only Christina Jemma meant, "she'll not only take a mile, she'll give none of it up."

Myka smiled down at Christina, who had already fallen asleep again, her lashes long and black against her skin. "It's okay," she said, tilting her head until it lightly touched Christina's, "I'm prepared."

She wasn't, not really. She hadn't any better idea now of what was going through Helena's mind, what plans, what schemes, than she did all those years ago. There were two things, however, as opposed to the one thing she had been fairly certain of after she and Sam had met with Helena in the prison's interview room. Helena wouldn't jeopardize her daughter's safety. That was as close to a guarantee as one could get from a Wells. The other, much less than a guarantee but more than Myka would have let herself believe the day Helena was released into her custody, was that Helena wouldn't want to hurt her again. She would, of course, if she thought she had to, but it would come at a cost, just as hurting her the first time had come at a cost. It wasn't the kind of heroic, ennobling love portrayed in movies or written about in novels; it was messy and imperfect and all that Helena knew how to offer. Myka carefully twirled a strand of Christina's hair around her finger. Yet Helena's imperfections had eventually resulted in Christina, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, Myka smiled at her old fantasy of being surrounded by Helena and a number of mini-me's. It wasn't something that could have been, it was something real - and sleeping on her shoulder - and maybe, someday, if everything worked out, it could be part of her future as well . . . .

Helena cooked dinner as Jemma relaxed with a paperback romance in one hand and the TV remote in the other. Myka wasn't sure how much this represented the resumption of an old pattern and how much of it was Helena living out a fantasy of her own. She must have spent the long nights in her cell imagining what Jemma and Christina were doing, what they had for dinner, whether Jemma made Christina take a bath before bed. Jemma had been planning to make sweet-and-sour chicken, which was one of Christina's favorites because it had "pink sauce" and Christina loved all things pink. The ingredients had been bought, but the vegetables and chicken still needed to be cut up, and as Helena inexpertly diced chicken breasts and tossed them in a breading mixture, Myka cut peppers and drained cans of water chestnuts. Christina lined up several of her toy animals on the breakfast bar and played a game of "zoo," its rules known only to her.

They ate at the table in the dining room, and as Christina burbled and drip-painted her face with sweet-and-sour sauce in her game attempts to feed herself with her left hand and Helena and Jemma bickered about whether Christina should be allowed to play outside the next day, Myka listened to their voices and the clinking of silverware on plates and juxtaposed the scene with her memories of Bering family dinners. When she was a child, dinners had usually been silent except for her father's requests, demands in reality, that she and Tracy report the grades they had received on their schoolwork. Tracy's occasional B in a string of As would merit no more than a disapproving grunt from him. Myka's one B for the entire school year, on a chemistry test she had slighted in favor of studying more for a trigonometry test, hadn't resulted in any sound from Warren Bering. Instead, he pretended that she wasn't at the table, in the house, for the next three days.

She grinned at the thought of his having to endure Christina's giggles as she used her fingers rather than her spoon to transfer bites of chicken from her plate to her mouth, her impromptu songs extolling the virtues of "pink sauce," her random bellowing of "My-ka" or "Myka, Myka" followed by the clapping of her sticky hands. The old Warren Bering, not the new one defanged by Alzheimer's who would smile somewhat glassily at his grandson's playing with Matchbox cars at the table, would have refused to eat surrounded by noise and distraction. There were no Bering family dinners, Myka concluded, only an uncomfortable 20 minutes when she would consume her meal as quickly as she could while making herself as small a target as possible.

Her meals didn't have to be like that anymore. They also didn't have to be the daily chores that she had made of them for the past several years. They could be like this, with Christina softly singing nonsense words and Helena and Jemma casually sparring with each other when they weren't urging Christina, in alternation, to play less and eat more. They could be anything. Strange to feel so freed over a simple meal, to see a wealth of possibilities in a pool of sweet-and-sour sauce, but she did.

"What did I get wrong?" Helena anxiously asked. "I'm used to Christina finger-painting with her food rather than eating it, but I've also seen her nibbling on Crayons, so she's no guide."

"It's fine," Myka said. As Helena gave her a skeptical look, Myka repeated, laughing, "It's fine. Everything, absolutely everything, is fine."

The closer the end of the evening approached, the less infinite the possibilities seemed but Myka felt no more constrained or nervous because of it. The old Myka and Helena would have combusted long before this; with no child, no live-in Jemma, no betrayals or, more accurately, no evidence of the ones Helena had already committed or hints of the ones she had yet to plan, they would have been romping in the bed for hours. But there was a child, who wanted her mother to illustrate the next installment of _The Bald Princess_ as Myka developed it on the fly, and there was Jemma, although she used the stagecraft involved in getting this particular bedtime story told to Christina's perfection, as an opportunity to escape into her own bedroom. And there was their history, eight years of it apart.

Closing Christina's door behind them, her complaints at being left alone and having the lights turned out becoming fainter, Helena was suddenly unsure, ill at ease, her hands seeking her jeans' pockets. The confidence, insolence really, with which Helena had carried herself when they first met had been eroded by mistakes and regrets, but Myka had never seen her so intensely uncomfortable, as if she wished she could shrug off her skin like she might dirty clothes. "Are you going back to your apartment now?" Helena abruptly asked her.

"I don't know," Myka said, "I didn't, I mean, I don't have any expectations." Seeing that her response made Helena no happier, she added, "Would it be easier if I left?"

"I think it comes down to what you want, Myka," Helena said just as curtly, tiptoeing down the hall toward the stairs. Watching herself take exaggeratedly careful steps, she said, "This reminds me of when I was a teenager and I used to sneak my conquest of the day into the flat." Laughing softly, ruefully, she glanced at Myka. "You were the only one of my amours my mother liked."

"Because I was the only one she met?"

"Ha." Then Helena reconsidered. "There is some truth to that." At the bottom of the stairs, she turned to face Myka. "You're the one who's seeing this all so clearly. What do you see happening next?" With a derisive puff of air, she asked, "Am I supposed to sweep you off your feet? It's a little late for that. You'd keep one foot on the floor for fear I'd drop you."

The discomfort, the defensiveness, Helena was petrified. Myka realized that Helena was trying to trust her, but next to honesty, trust was about the hardest thing for a con artist to manage. She was used to writing the scripts that others would follow. "I wouldn't say 'clearly.' I'm seeing what could be, that's all. Nothing _has_ to happen, Helena."

"That's what I'm afraid of. If nothing has to happen, it won't, and you'll realize that none of this is what you want." With a queerly wistful smile, she said, "I was less frightened of you when you hated me."

They lay together in her bed after each had taken her turn undressing in the privacy of the master bath. Just as they had used to combust without care, they had rarely bothered with modesty when it came to dressing or undressing. Myka kept her top and underwear on, but Helena had unearthed a set of pajamas, smelling vaguely of lavender, which attested to how long and how deeply they had been buried in a drawer. Seeing her in the pinstripe short set, Myka thought she looked like an overgrown child sent away to summer camp, but she only folded back the sheet and invited Helena to slip in next to her. Helena didn't roll to the other side of the bed, but her tension was tangible. "I haven't been with anyone since Ben," she said as abruptly as she had outside Christina's door. "There weren't that many before him either, which, given my history, is hard to believe, I know. But it's true. Sex had always been a tool, one I enjoyed using, but a tool all the same. It became something more with you, and when I left you, it became something less. I don't know what it'll be now, with you." She laughed weakly. "What if I've lost my magic touch?"

Myka turned off the lamp on the nightstand and edged closer to her. "This is enough." Hearing a disbelieving snort, she rested a hand on Helena's hip and let the other smooth the dark hair spilling across the pillow, darker even than the impenetrable black of the room. She thought she could feel the jump of Helena's pulse through her skin, the barely restrained impulse to flee in the skittery slide of her hair. They had nestled like this before, in Helena's bed after the charity run at Barrington, in Christina's hospital room, one needing comfort, the other, in her own way, offering it. Helena might not have had sex in years, but Myka knew that she hadn't held anyone she had slept with out of affection or need since before her divorce. They would both have to relearn how simply to be with one another. Given how easily and frequently they had lolled in bed when they lived together, the tangling of limbs serving as both foreplay and afterglow, the muscle memory was there. The mattress creaked and suddenly Helena's butt was pressed against her pelvis, and the hand that had been resting on Helena's hip was trapped against Helena's stomach. The muscle memory was definitely there. Myka smiled to herself and pulled Helena's shirt off her shoulder to kiss it.

They held each other for a long time without speaking, long enough for Myka to begin drifting toward sleep. But she didn't want to sleep, not yet, because she wasn't through with talking about Dorchester, because she hadn't let herself think about Dorchester in years and yet, today, it was practically all she had been able to think about. "Catching that fraud about the Merrick painting wasn't one of the bigger cases we worked. Bates forgot that we were even on it once we were back. When we were together I hardly gave it a thought. But after the heist, after I knew you were involved, I kept going over and over everything, trying to pinpoint where I had gone wrong, and I settled on Dorchester because that's where I lost focus. You had become more than a hired gun, more than a colleague, more, even, than a potential friend, and I obsessed over the thought that if the case had ended differently, then none of the rest of it would've happened. No 'us,' no Marston, or no successful Marston." The relaxed curving of Helena's back into her had stopped. "I couldn't change things, so to keep my sanity, I put it out of my mind."

_She had been shaking so badly after they left Hobart's office that Helena led her to a bench in the student exhibition gallery and sat her down on it. Thanks to Rosemary Hastings's completely improbable, wholly miraculous confirmation of a meeting that hadn't existed 20 minutes ago, she and Helena might very well have a half-hour with President Nolan and one of the Vanderwaals and nothing to fill it with except suppositions and unproven claims against a member of the faculty. Maybe they could find a bakery and buy donuts, Myka giddily thought. They could fill the meeting with donuts. Helena was circling the gallery, gazing at the artwork, dismissing most of it with mutterings against overindulgent parents humoring their talentless children. She fell silent before one or two, however, and when she took a seat on the bench, she said, with an emotion that Myka couldn't quite define, "A few actually have some ability. Let's hope we've managed to foul Hobart's little nest here before he can ruin them." More warmly, she asked, "Are you feeling better? It was a bravura performance, Myka, but now we do have to give Nolan something before we leave tomorrow."_

" _You really think Rosemary will schedule that breakfast meeting? Maybe we can bring donuts. I'm thinking that's all we have."_

_Helena leaned in and tipped Myka's chin toward her, her gaze steady and reassuring. "I'm not one who believes the world treats us kindly, but after what I saw you do in there, I'm convinced that Joshua will come through for us. We have Hobart. He's probably on the phone with his confederates as we speak, trying to find a way out of this mess." Her lips twisted up in a charmingly crooked grin. "Trust me."_

_They bought no donuts, barely having time to grab a few granola bars on offer at the reception desk as they hustled through the hotel's lobby on their way to a meeting they were already late for. That there was a meeting and that Rosemary had been able to arrange it in such a short time was something of a miracle as well. She had sent an email to Myka a scant half-hour after their talk with Hobart confirming that Nolan, Christopher Vanderwaal, and Stoddard, the university's counsel, were looking forward to a report on their progress. As if the universe had decided to hitch a ride on her improbable good fortune, Myka had to admit that Helena's other prediction also came true; Joshua Donovan called late in the evening, but he called, providing them with the information they needed to make a persuasive, if not airtight, argument that the Merrick donated to the university was a Merrick and that the suspicion it wasn't had been engineered by a discontented Vanderwaal daughter and a couple of con artists, one of whom was in the university's employ._

_Joshua hadn't been able to discover any connection between Alex Hobart and Katie Vanderwaal before Hobart was hired by the university, but he had found a number of intriguing links between Hobart and a man named Thomas Dawson, who had been enrolled in the same chemical dependency program at the same San Diego-area clinic at roughly the same time as Katie Vanderwaal. Their stays had overlapped by a month. Furthermore, after much arduous trolling through electronic files of incorporation papers, his complaint causing Helena to roll her eyes rather than offer sympathy, Joshua had uncovered the name Thomas Dawson on a list of Bellamy Consulting's founding members. Subsequent filings by the company didn't list his name, and, as of five years ago, Thomas Dawson had ceased to exist. There were no traces of him anywhere. Coincidentally Alex Hobart had no history beyond the past five years. Joshua couldn't prove that Thomas Dawson and Alex Hobart were the same man - he would need the time that Helena and Myka didn't have to prove it - but Dawson had a lengthy criminal history, including burglary and possession of stolen goods, and, Joshua thought Helena might find it interesting to know, an apparently genuine MFA._

" _He could credibly pass himself off as an art teacher," Helena had mused._

" _A sparkling C.V., some clever friends who would act as his professional references, it could be done," Joshua had agreed. "And the college that fired him - it was a real position. Perhaps his only real one before coming to Dorchester." His monotone wavered; it sounded like he might have been smothering a laugh, as unlikely as it seemed to Myka. "Putting a lowlife at a high-class college isn't going to elevate him. Just like a bad person hooking up with a good one doesn't become good by association."_

" _I get it," Helena had told him testily._

_As for Bellamy Consulting, Joshua had been able to find no evidence that it had performed any of the appraisals listed on its website, although, since the clients named on the site were mainly individual collectors or private firms, there was no reason he should have found any evidence, he pointed out. However, a small museum that, according to the website, had hired Bellamy three years ago to appraise a new addition to its collection had actually closed its doors in 2000. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" His laughter was unmistakable this time, but Myka liked it no better for hearing it. It had the thinness and sharpness of a fillet knife._

_She and Helena had stayed up well past midnight, assembling their notes and trying to create a coherent narrative from them. Or, rather, Helena had taken on that duty, as Myka remotely plumbed the FBI databases for information on Thomas Dawson. She had found little more than the arrest records Joshua had summarized. Dawson's crimes had been small and well within the purview of state law enforcement; there had been no need to bring in federal agents. Interestingly enough, among the items recovered from his burglaries had been antiques and artwork. Eventually the two of them had dropped, exhausted, onto Helena's bed for a couple of hours of sleep before the meeting. Myka had kicked off her shoes and scrunched a pillow under her head without giving a second thought to the fact that she and Helena were sharing a bed. Oddly, it seemed natural, even down to Helena's bumping her butt against her as she burrowed deeper into the bed, like they had been sharing a bed for years._

_The late night, the frenzied preparation, the necessity of listening to Joshua's drone, none of it had been necessary - another one of Helena's predictions that had been absolutely on the money. Rosemary Hastings didn't bother to hide the triumphant little smile on her face as she ushered them into President Nolan's office at 8:29. Donuts also weren't necessary, a tray of pastries, which included some donuts worthy of the longing glances Myka was sending them, as well as carafes of coffee and hot water (Rosemary hadn't forgotten about Helena's preference for tea) were on the top of a credenza. Three men, Nolan, Stoddard, and a younger man who had to be Christopher Vanderwaal, greeted them casually as they entered the room and then returned to their conversation about winter vacation plans. Myka thought the mood in the room seemed closer to that of a staff meeting rather than a verdict on whether the university owned a multi-million dollar painting or a forgettable rendering of the Dorchester countryside._

_President Nolan urged them to have a pastry and a cup of coffee, while, with a distinctly lighter step than he had shown when they first met, he went to his desk and searched among the papers on top of it. Finding what he wanted, he joined them at the credenza and handed Myka the document. It was a faxed letter from Bellamy Consulting, withdrawing its report as the result of "an internal review that uncovered significant errors in the analysis." Bellamy's experts, the letter said, "could no longer conclude with the same degree of confidence that the painting in question wasn't a Merrick."_

_There would be no further analysis of the painting. Helena suggested that the university or the Vanderwaal family contact a bona fide expert for another appraisal, but Nolan, after glancing at Stoddard and Vanderwaal and receiving an approving nod from each of them, declared that the matter was settled. As far as the university and the Vanderwaal family were concerned, the painting was a Merrick. Moreover, it was highly unlikely that the university's trustees would ever recommend selling the painting to raise funds (especially, Myka thought, if one of the trustees was a Vanderwaal). Edgar Merrick and the intertwined Merrick and Vanderwaal families were part of the area's history and, thus, part of the university's history._

" _It would be like selling a birthright," Nolan proclaimed._

_Even more importantly, there was no need to publicly embarrass one of the university's most important donors, but Myka didn't say that aloud. Despite entreating her and Helena to stay and enjoy more coffee and pastries before they returned to New York, Nolan was clearly anxious for them to leave. Christopher Vanderwaal was already making his excuses, apologizing for having to leave for another meeting. Helena took their cups and returned them to the credenza, saying over her shoulder, "Professor Hobart will be surprised by this development. He'd suggested Bellamy, hadn't he? I hope the company's errors won't be held against him." She almost sounded sincere._

" _No, when his contract comes up for review in the spring, we'll be looking at other factors." Stoddard more successfully managed to sound neutral, but his message was clear, and he and Helena smiled at each other in mutual understanding._

_Myka drove on the way back to the city while Helena slept. More accurately, Helena occasionally dozed, only to wake up and exclaim, "You really were magnificent yesterday. Have I told you that enough?" Myka would simply shake her head in answer, pretending that negotiating the increasing volume of traffic was absorbing all of her attention. They were in the office by early afternoon, and Bates almost immediately sent them to interview the Wall Street wizard, his wife, and their household staff. They no sooner returned from the wizard's palatial suite off Central Park than Bates virtually imprisoned them in a conference room with the piles of paper that had been produced just at this early stage of the investigation. Refueling with coffee and vending-machine-supplied carbohydrates, Myka didn't keep track of the time, didn't realize until she answered a call from Sam on a brief walk out to the courtyard to stretch her legs that it was already closing in on 10:00. It grew dark so early that Myka could believe it was dinnertime or past midnight; she didn't care. She didn't work by the clock, she worked until her eyes no longer focused or her knees had so locked under her desk that she would practically stumble when she got up from her chair. Whether she had dinner before midnight or at all was of little matter to her, the work came first. So far her relationship with Sam hadn't been much of a threat to the order of her priorities._

_She and Helena exited the office building a few minutes after 11:00. Snowflakes were beginning to flutter down from the sky. She had only a vague idea of where Helena lived, somewhere fashionably post-industrial, too arty to give itself over to gentrification. They took different routes, different subways, but tonight they lingered, Helena finally saying, "It's hellishly late, but we really should celebrate what we did in Dorchester. There's a bar not far from here, we can get a drink and an appetizer, if nothing else." Exhaustion had dimmed the challenging light in those eyes, but the smile remained cocky._

_Myka was surprised by how much regret she felt at declining. "I'm meeting Sam at his place for a really late dinner." She could feel herself blushing. She hadn't given much of a thought to Sam at all the past few days, and though she could attribute her lack of enthusiasm to her own exhaustion, she knew that if Helena gave her an especially devilish smile or disdainfully arched her eyebrow in the way only she could do it, Sam and his stir-fry would be left behind._

" _I understand," Helena said, "another time." She touched Myka's arm, as if to emphasize that she did understand. Instead of turning and walking toward the subway stop, she went to the curb and tried to hail a cab._

" _Hey," Myka shouted after her, "I'd like to see your work sometime . . . if you allow visitors."_

_A cab had just pulled up, but Helena turned, her smile even cockier. "You want to come up and see my etchings?" She laughed, and there was no tinge of mockery to it. Not much, anyway. "Anytime, Agent Bering. If you have a spare Saturday afternoon, you'll usually find me there. My studio's in what's called the Weller Building. You can look it up."_

"But today, it didn't seem like I'd fall into the abyss if I remembered Dorchester. For the first time in eight years, you were on the other side of it." Helena might have minutely moved closer to her. "What would have happened if I'd gone with you instead that night?" Myka asked softly, her lips brushing the shell of Helena's ear.

"You'd have come home with me, you'd have been with me," Helena said. "We could pretend, if we wanted, that things would've turned out differently if it had happened like that."

"It's a possibility," Myka agreed.

Helena rolled away from her only to straddle her with a speed and assertiveness that Myka didn't expect. Her hips pinioned between Helena's thighs, she heard the rustle of clothing and then the whip of something being flung into the air. Helena leaned forward, positioning herself with a hand on either side of Myka's head, and instinctively, because she had done this so many times with Helena in the past, in bed, out of bed, seemingly everywhere, Myka cupped Helena's breasts, their nipples hardening against her thumbs. "Let me show you," Helena said, "all that that night could have held for us."

 


	18. Chapter 18

"I thought you were a real couple," Mrs. Carmichael said sadly, not looking at Myka and Helena but at the agents who were taking pictures from the walls, files from the desk and file cabinets, even the yellowed newspaper articles and memorabilia from the display cases. It was an acquisition of evidence, both so unrelenting and rapacious that it unsettled Myka to watch it, all the more so since she had been on both sides of it, the agent methodically gathering items and the suspect wondering how something so mundane as a dry cleaning ticket could be used against her. She felt sorry for Mrs. Carmichael, whose hands were nearly tearing at the double loop of pearls that accessorized her headmaster's wife's navy blue dress, and even sorrier anticipating the fallout for Barrington that was yet to come. Barrington wasn't her favorite place; she had no tolerance for the sanctuaries of the rich and privileged, but the children of the rich and privileged who attended the school were just that, children, and their teachers – if they weren't in need of a pay check, they wouldn't be here. All those nice cars in the parking lot were probably purchased on installment plans.

"Unfortunately, we can't always be as forthcoming as we'd like to be during an investigation," she said, hoping it would answer all the questions that Mrs. Carmichael would inevitably ask. Did he really do all those things I heard about on the news? Was it happening right here, all the time? How could we not know? Are you sure that this isn't a horrible mistake? Myka knew that her response wouldn't answer any of those questions; it was just agency-speak and pretty crappy agency-speak at that.

"It wasn't all lies," Helena volunteered brusquely, and Myka shot her a warning glance. "My daughter is real, and someday I'll be looking for a secondary school for her."

"Likely not Barrington," Mrs. Carmichael said in resignation. "We'll be lucky if it survives this," she whispered to herself.

Helena was walking toward the opposite wall, attention fixed on a picture that hadn't yet been taken down. Today she was wearing faded jeans and a spread-collar shirt, sleeves rolled above her elbows. She had worn much the same the day before when they had been going through the boxes of evidence agents had brought from DeWitt's house and car and the homes and offices of Chris Jeffries and Alex McCrossan. It was a departure from the business suits and dress pants she had been wearing, but sorting through personal belongings could be a surprisingly messy (and disgusting) business. Myka wouldn't have thought much about it, except for the fact that Helena also was wearing no make-up, and her fingernails were ragged; she was chewing them, an old habit she rarely indulged in. Helena might dress down, but she never willingly went out in public without her imperfections mitigated. They had spent no time together outside work since Tuesday evening when Helena had returned to Mrs. Frederic's alone. She hadn't invited Myka to come by that night nor the next, and she had limited their conversations to the investigation.

Myka wasn't pushing her. She didn't know where they were going either, but she thought they might not feel quite so lost if they could share how uncertain and, yes, ambivalent they were about what they had started just a few nights ago. It wasn't a mistake, at least not yet; she felt better about herself, about life in general, than she had in years, since the day she had entered Helena's darkened loft and realized that Helena was never coming back. But there was a lot to figure out, including what Helena might still be hiding from her.

"Are you going to need to talk to me again?" Mrs. Carmichael had stopped worrying her pearls and was, instead, casting anxious sideways looks at the doorway. "I spoke with Agent Jinks for over an hour this morning."

"It depends on what we find here." Myka scrubbed at her forehead with the back of her thumb. "I'm sorry I can't be more definite."

Mrs. Carmichael quirked her mouth in what might have been resignation or disappointment. "I'll be in my office if you need me." She moved a few steps away only to stop. "I know I shouldn't care, but is he all right, Bryce, I mean? He brought me some sort of little present almost every day. It's hard to believe . . . . "

Involuntarily Myka looked at Helena. "It might have been genuine, it might have been an attempt to win you over and make you less likely to question his behavior. It was probably both. Don't try to decide which it was, it'll drive you crazy." Probably the truth if you were dealing with a con who hadn't completely forsaken her humanity, but Bryce wasn't Helena. Bryce was Jim Wells. He had been arrested while she napped with Christina Monday afternoon, and he had still been in interrogation when she and Helena had provided a bedside production of the newest installment of The Bald Princess that evening. A judge had denied his attorney's application for bail the following morning, when Myka was drinking a bottomless cup of coffee and wondering how painful it would be to tape her eyelids open because it was the only way she would stay awake. Helena displayed more energy since, as she said with a mocking smile, "evil never slept," but her quip had carried an edge, and she hadn't been able to meet Myka's eyes for long.

DeWitt had yet to say anything of importance, refusing to answer questions unless his attorney was present, and, when the attorney was present, refusing to answer questions on his attorney's advice. The evidence they had collected so far had been of little help, although DeWitt's computer and cell phone were still being analyzed. The multiple passports that Laura had reported seeing were missing from his home; the only one agents had found was the one in DeWitt's name. It wasn't proof that he had been getting ready to flee. There had been no packed suitcases at the door and, to their knowledge, no large withdrawals from his accounts, but Myka was sure Laura had given herself away, a failure to smile at one of his jokes, a sudden quietness. Something had tipped DeWitt off, and she was positive that the more they reviewed the evidence they had – and the more information they collected – the clearer it would become that he had been preparing his exit. Helena had her own hunches; it was why they were "overseeing" the search of his office at Barrington, although the team they were working with was experienced and Steve was there to give them direction. Helena thought the keys they needed to unlock DeWitt would be here, "where he got his start, fleecing and manipulating his friends, where his heart beats, Myka, to the extent he has one."

Tucking her hands under her blazer to slide them into her pants pockets – unlike Helena, she couldn't let her moods drive her wardrobe choices – Myka joined her at the wall. The photo Helena was looking at so intently was the one she had noticed on their first visit to this room, which seemed much longer ago than it had been in reality. "There has to be more to it than the bogus Cadet Scholarship." Helena seemed to be staring down the teenaged Bryce DeWitt. "He would've wanted to gut this place. Siphoning money from the fund hurt the contributing alumni, the prospective students, but not the school."

"I'm not sure I agree. The school's reputation is going to take a hard hit from this."

Helena didn't turn her attention away from the picture, but she tipped her head in consideration of Myka's point. Then she smiled tightly, fiercely, knowingly at the photo. "My father was kicked out of art school. Do your files on him tell you that? He much preferred holding court in a pub and losing money to bookies than attending classes or being diligent about his art. At the end of the school year, the school typically displayed the work of its best students in an exhibit open to the public. If he hadn't been expelled, his paintings would have been the star of the show, so he said. The night before the exhibit opened, however, vandals broke into the gallery and trashed the place. They took paintings from the wall and stomped on them, swung hammers at the sculptures. No one was ever arrested, but my father liked to brag it about it later, about how he and some chums jimmied the locks – these weren't masterworks, not yet, just the offerings of a handful of students, so the security was lax – and got his 'own' back." She tapped the glass with the nail of a reddened and sore-looking finger. "He didn't know whether he loved or hated the school more, he couldn't tell the difference. That's DeWitt."

Myka nodded, sensing that anything more responsive – or verbal – would provoke a negative reaction. Her eyes flicking over Myka's shoulder to the desk at the end of the room, Helena said, "I'm going to talk to your colleagues over there and see what they've found. It could be in plain sight and they'd overlook it, they don't understand how he works."

Myka watched her charge over to the agents, who were skimming through the file folders stacked on the desktop. Helena's suspicions to the contrary, the agency did have information about Jim Wells's attendance at one of the premier art and design schools in Britain. He hadn't been kicked out for bad behavior; he hadn't been permitted to reenroll because he had lacked the money for the school's tuition. Maybe he had gambled the tuition money away or maybe poor performance had cost him a scholarship, but he hadn't been dismissed for bad behavior. The school had reported a break-in, but it was before Helena's father would have been old enough to apply for admittance, and there had been no vandalizing of student artwork, just the stealing of petty cash. Other than being piss-poor fathers, she had never seen much similarity between Jim Wells and Warren Bering, but there was something so unflagging about the former's self-aggrandizement that it reminded her of how her father would let no mistake go unmentioned. If she had been distracted enough to misfile McKinnon as MacKinnon or to short the cash drawer by a dime, her father would unfailingly broadcast it at the dinner table, night after night after night, always finding some way to work it into a conversation.

She glanced up at the picture. Had she seen something predatory in his smile before? Today the smile was only jubilant. The team had won a championship, and he was the captain. She wanted to believe, even if the innocence of the smile had lasted for just the moment that it had taken the photographer to capture it, that all the scheming Bryce DeWitt had had in mind was how to smuggle the celebratory beer keg into his room. The thud of boxes being stacked caused her to look behind her. Agents were loading boxes on hand trolleys; the search was winding down, and she was no longer needed. She and Helena had never been needed for the search or for the interviews, which Steve and another agent were conducting. Pete had begrudgingly assented to Helena's request that she and Myka be allowed to go out to Barrington with the rest of the team; he had much preferred that they remain in the office and refocus on Nate Burdette. "That's why we let her out to play," he had hissed in Myka's ear before waving them out of his office.

Steve ducked his head through the doorway and motioned to Myka. She met him in the hallway. "The top brass here isn't too anxious to meet with us, but we did line up some times for tomorrow morning. Otherwise we've pretty much gone through the list of people he most closely worked with. We can get the rest this afternoon or tomorrow." He paused before adding, "You and Helena don't have to hang out here any longer. We've got it covered."

"She thinks we do." Steve didn't roll his eyes or make a sour mouth as Pete would have done (as Pete, in fact, did hours earlier when Helena had made her request). He regarded her in a manner Myka might have called serene except that serenity was never part of an investigation, although if anyone could examine the wreckage a criminal like DeWitt left behind him without it putting his faith in the basic goodness of humanity into question it was Steve. "She thinks he ran more cons here than the scholarship fraud he cooked up with Jeffries and McCrossan."

"Wouldn't surprise me, but that's not her worry anymore. Pete's made it clear that he wants you and Helena to move on to other cases. We've got enough to put DeWitt away until he's an old man. What we're doing now, it's just grunt work, Mykes, you know that. If he was into anything else, we'll find it." He looked around her, as if he wanted to peer into DeWitt's office. "Not that I'm being critical, but she's, um, less put-together than normal. What's going on with her?" He met her gaze, and Myka felt a surge of heat flush through her. "What's going on with the two of you?" She desperately wanted to undo another button of her blouse or take off her jacket, which seemed to be trapping and intensifying her body heat. It wouldn't be any more of a giveaway than what she said next. He always knew when she was lying. He appeared to have come to the same conclusion because he spoke before she did. "I guess it's too late to warn you about sticking your tongue down her throat." She tried to keep her expression impassive. "Is she worth your career?"

"You should have asked me that ten years ago," Myka said.

Helena didn't object when Myka told her they were going to return to the office ahead of the others. She had been leafing through some old correspondence, idly tracing the bold B, D, and W of DeWitt's signature, but she put the letters back in the folder and followed Myka to the car without asking why they were leaving now or volunteering whether she had found anything in support of her belief that the fraud ran deeper. Like the sullen teen she had suddenly become, Helena slouched against the seat and slipped on sunglasses; if there had been a door to slam other than the car door, Myka would have been feeling the rattle in her bones. Knowing it was the wrong approach to take and the wrong thing to say, Myka couldn't help herself. "Pete's going to start pressing us on Burdette now. You haven't been holding out on me, have you?" God, she would make such a lousy mother.

"It's definitely a 'he'll call us,' and he hasn't called us." Even though Myka couldn't see Helena's eyes through her sunglasses, the lenses were plenty accusatory. "We should enjoy this time while we have it. When he does contact me, he won't be patient. He'll want the location of the Bowdoin haul. We can't hesitate." Her smile bared her teeth. "Do you know where my father hid the artwork?"

"Do you?" Myka flashed back, just as pointedly. Relenting, she said, "We don't have to know where it is. Our job is to make him believe that we know where it is. All we need is for you to lure him to us."

"It won't be that easy, Myka," Helena said sadly. She rested her head against the passenger side window, seeking sleep or whatever form of escape she could. Myka eased the car to a stop, the gridlock into the city fully operative this early in the afternoon. Miles of hoods and roofs glinting in the sun, forming a vast metallic carapace, as if the greatest threat to the city wasn't climate change or terrorists or its own politicians, but an enormous beetle descending on it from the freeway. "I forgot how absolutely miserable happiness could make me," Helena grumbled into the silence.

"You're happy?" Myka didn't try to hide the disbelieving note.

"I was part of a family, a real family, for 24 precious hours. I had my daughter and the woman I love with me, I was in my own home, I had a mother who was actually beaming at me, and I had had sex for the first time in over five years. I was ecstatic," Helena concluded, sounding more beleaguered than euphoric. "Only then to remember that my daughter's father is probably conspiring with his attorneys to take her away from me forever, that I'm not free to live in my home, that the woman I love is also my jailer, and that having taken one bloody criminal off the streets is not enough, I have to go up against the most ruthless man I've had the misfortune to meet. Which reminds me that I should check my phone to see if Ben has arrived with a phalanx of law enforcement to forcibly remove Christina from her home." With a huff, she fumbled for her phone.

If she hadn't thought she might let the car roll into the bumper of the car in front of her, Myka would have started pounding her forehead on the steering wheel. Instead, she started to laugh, quietly at first and then her laughter grew louder, partly from relief, partly from exasperation. "It's not funny," Helena complained. "Ben might be a joke, but his father the senator is no laughing matter. Ben's told Jemma that he's not taking Christina this week, he says it's so she can better heal, but he's planning something, I'm sure of it. You saw the way he was at the hospital. He's not the kind of man who takes 'No' easily, and if he can't do something about it, his father will." Helena tugged her sunglasses down and eyed Myka over the top of them. "But that's not what you're finding funny, is it? You thought I was, what, feeling caught? Wanting out but not sure how to say it? Or were you wondering what con of mine our being intimate put into jeopardy?" She pushed her sunglasses back up and stared resolutely at the windshield. "The trust won't come immediately," she said as if she were lecturing herself, "for either of us."

Myka had imagined that they would drive or, rather, inch the rest of the way into the city in silence, because Helena's observation hadn't opened a chasm between them as much as it had illuminated the one that was already there. Then Helena smiled at something on her phone and, as they had come to another literal halt, she turned the screen so that Myka could see it. On it was a picture of Christina holding up a drawing she had made for "Mommy and MyKaa with Love, Christina." The drawing itself was indecipherable, a sun and some four-legged creatures that Myka guessed were puppies but the words were legible. The letters were obviously drawn by a child, their shapes betraying both force and uncertainty, the purple crayon equally a spike and a paintbrush. Christina, writing left-handed, must have labored over them. "Tell her I love it," Myka said, and Helena swiftly, abruptly, leaned over to kiss her cheek. As Helena typed back a response, Myka imagined Parker and his cohorts in IT scrolling through endless "Mommy loves you," "Mommy misses her pwecious little girl," and "Mommy sends her baby girl XXXXs and OOOOs" in the log of Helena's texts, damning only in the sense that Helena wasn't afraid to text in baby talk. Yes, there was a chasm, but Christina served as a bridge over it.

In her cubicle hours later, Myka replayed in her mind Helena's worries about Ben Winslow. She had the files on Nate Burdette spread out in front of her, but as gruesome as the pictures and accounts were of his activities, especially his retaliations for real or perceived betrayals, it was Christina's father who seemed the greatest obstacle at the moment. She remembered very clearly their confrontation outside Christina's hospital room. While Winslow's attorney would have counseled him against acting any more rashly than he already had (having shown up at the hospital high and full of threats against his daughter's mother and granddaughter his first mistake), Helena wasn't paranoid to fear Ben and his father. They disliked Christina's current custody arrangement and had been jockeying to change it; Myka knew that her all but throwing Ben out of the hospital would only stoke the Winslows' outrage.

As a practical matter, they (meaning the agency and Justice) couldn't afford to have Helena distracted by a custody battle. They needed to have her fully committed to bringing in Burdette. Myka involuntarily looked down at the pictures loosely fanned on her desk. She and Helena would have only one shot at him; he wouldn't allow them a second. Myka could always argue to Pete and, if necessary, to Sam that someone with pull at the agency or Justice should talk to Senator Winslow and convince him that trying to change the custody arrangement wasn't in anyone's best interest, including his, but that plan could backfire. Instead of being persuaded, the senator could be intrigued by the interest federal law enforcement was showing in the custody of his granddaughter, and Myka was certain there was much about the Burdette investigation that neither Pete's bosses nor Sam's wanted to come to light. Nothing like a Congressional committee to make even Justice and the FBI tread very, very carefully. Besides, it was Justice that had put the bug in Ben Winslow's ear that Christina might be his; Sam and his superiors had wanted leverage over Helena to get her to agree to bring Burdette in and setting up a potential custody battle with the Winslows had been the way they chose to do it. Conceivably they could view a more determined effort by the senator's lawyers to get Ben full custody as an even better prod to Helena.

Myka groaned and rested her forehead on the photos and file documents. She felt fingers knead the muscles in her neck, but by the time she had righted herself in her chair, Helena was standing in the entry space of her cubicle. "Leena has finished picking my brain about DeWitt, and I need something to clear my head. If I go down to the coffee shop, can I bring you back something?" Myka suppressed a wry smile. Helena was supposed to concentrate on Burdette unless Leena asked her to concentrate on something else. What Leena wanted carried more weight in the office and among the more senior management than Pete's hisses and growls. Although her next words were directed at Myka, Helena's eyes were fixed on the files. "But if you've lost your appetite after having seen some of Nate's handiwork . . . "

"Making sure I know what we're getting into."

Helena's smile was faint. "It's good to prepare, as long as you understand he'll find a way to surprise us." She briefly closed her eyes, but because she was remembering something about Burdette or trying to chase a memory of him away, Myka didn't know, and she didn't ask. "How long do you think you'll stay tonight?"

Myka shrugged; trying to lighten the mood, she said, "It depends on what you bring me from the coffee shop."

"If you can make do with a coffee, I'll treat you to dinner at chez Wells."

"What are you serving, grilled cheese or frozen pizza?"

"I'm thinking of expanding my repertoire," Helens said loftily, "and experimenting with a stir fry." Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, "I  _can_  read a cookbook. In fact, it was what I had to resort to if I wanted to read when I was in prison."

Myka responded with mock sternness, "Playing the world's tiniest violin about your brief stay in prison will not guarantee you a pity pass for your cooking." She drew out the pause for an extra beat or two.

"Eight o'clock."

"Seven-thirty," Helena countered. "It will be edible. Trust me."

Those two words continued to hang in the air. Myka was still hearing them when Helena returned with a coffee for her, and even later, as Helena passed her cube on her way out of the office and leaned over the top of a panel to whisper "7:30," Myka almost believed she whispered "Trust me" as well. And Myka did trust her, the Helena who proudly showed off her daughter's artistic endeavors, the Helena who had straddled her in bed only a few nights before and brought her alive as no one else could do, and, oddly enough, this new Helena, who was promising to cook a meal from scratch. She even trusted the Helena who had said she was sorry. She trusted the Helenas she could see; it was the ones she couldn't who were the problem. There were Helenas, she knew, Helena never intended her to see.

Straightening the Burdette files, Myka locked them in a drawer. Agencies that trafficked in secrets and confidential information tended to be riddled by gossip, but there was no sense in leaving out files that would only confirm what she suspected had become an open secret, that Helena Wells hadn't been freed from her cage to assist on cases like the one involving Bryce DeWitt; she had been released to hunt down larger prey. Secrets and confidential information. It wasn't just the agency that trafficked in them. How many times had Ben Winslow been found in possession of a controlled substance or driving under the influence and how many times had the charges been dropped or an arrest never made in the first place?

She had contacts, some she could even call friends, in the city's police departments and DA's office. Some of those relationships had grown spontaneously while others she had had to cultivate. She could probably find out just how much pressure the senator had brought to bear to extricate his son from his bad decisions, but she would burn up nearly every favor she was owed in the process. And if she tried to use the information into coercing the senator, she would lose every connection she had. That didn't bother her as much as the fear that it wouldn't work. If she were going to misuse her position – because Myka Bering, private citizen, didn't have the power to threaten anyone – she wanted to make sure that throwing the rest of her career away ended in a positive result. Without the agency's backing, she had nowhere to go with stories of the senator's undue influence, except to news outlets, and whether public shame would motivate the senator was unclear. No one expected the rich and privileged to behave well; thus, no one was surprised when they didn't. All she would have would be one more sorry history of one more spoiled white man who evaded the punishment meted out to others who were poorer and whose skin was darker. The senator would laugh her out of his office, and then he would have her fired. She would have to find something else.

It was a minute or two shy of 7:30 when she rang the doorbell for the upper apartment of the Frederic house. Fixing a smile on her face that belied her mood, she found it turning genuine when Helena opened the door, sporting a soy-sauce-stained shirt and accompanied by a distinct smell of burned oil, burned things period. "Does the battle hang in the balance?" she teased as Helena waved her in.

"Not any longer," Helena said ruefully, "I had to call in for reinforcements."

Which turned out to be Mrs. Frederic. She was at the stove, wielding a spatula in a skillet with flair. All the windows had been thrown open, but the burned smell was pervasive and something blackened and misshapen was in the sink. Myka also didn't miss the kitchen fire extinguisher on the counter. "Take a seat, Agent Bering, dinner will ready in just a few minutes. Helena, will you check on the rice cooker?"

Myka pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, amused to see Helena obediently lifting the lid and tentative poking at the rice with a wooden spoon. With an efficiency that could have been that of a mother and grandmother who had presided over decades of meals but which seemed to speak to something more fundamental about her, Mrs. Frederic emptied the contents of the skillet in a bowl and grabbed a fistful of silverware from a drawer on her way to the table. Helena followed more carefully with a bowl of rice, and she had barely set it on the table before Mrs. Frederic was back with plates and napkins. "Just the drinks," she said to Helena, and Helena, as obediently as before, filled three glasses from a pitcher of ice water.

"Beer or wine, Agent Bering?" Mrs. Frederic was untying her apron, which had no stains. The sleeves of her silk blouse were spotless.

No, no relaxing or dulling her senses around this woman. Mrs. Frederic might not be dangerous, but she wasn't harmless, Myka was sure of it. "Water's fine, thanks."

Mrs. Frederic joined them for dinner, which, Helena joked, is "further proof, Myka, that dinner at chez Wells is safe." Dinner wasn't only safe, it was good. Very good. As they ate, Helena related the disaster of her first attempt at the meal, which involved smoking oil, an accidental spill of hot water, a dish towel, and, ultimately, the fire extinguisher. Mrs. Frederic downplayed her role, commenting wryly that when her youngest was still at home, she had often come to his rescue. "Once we got the fire put out, the windows open, and a new skillet on the stove, it was a cruise to the finish."

"Only that," Myka dryly said as Helena laughed.

"Thankfully, Irene had some leftover chicken and vegetables to spare, which explains the zucchini and green beans instead of water chestnuts and snow peas. And, obviously, she took over at the controls."

"You made the effort. That means something."

Mrs. Frederic looked from one to the other and unsuccessfully hid her smile behind the glass she raised to her lips. Conversation turned from Helena's almost-failed dinner to safer topics, the weather and some local initiatives in which Mrs. Frederic was involved. "The problem with being a community organizer is that you can't really remove yourself from a community. I can't help but get involved," she said. Reminiscing about the local politics of 30 years ago and more, she chuckled, "From a distance, it can almost seem quaint, the chicanery and graft and corruption we had to deal with. People moved from their homes, their neighborhoods, because a developer wanted to build more expensive homes on the property or turn it into something that was revenue-producing. They didn't have to break laws, although some did. The smarter ones knew that you got the politicians to change them for you." The meal was over, but they remained at the table. Helena having brought out another pitcher, this one of iced tea, and a plate of homemade cookies, also courtesy of Mrs. Frederic. "Most of them are retired now, like me, their careers behind them, but the younger ones, why, they're in the state assembly. A few are even in Congress." She carefully broke an oatmeal raisin cookie in half. "Some of them may have truly forgotten how they treated the most vulnerable of their constituents, but others, they remember. They may act like they don't, but they do. Unfortunately, there aren't too many of us around anymore who know enough to remind them." She lifted her eyes from the cookie and gazed deep into Myka's.

Helena was clearing plates from the table. It was hard for Myka to tell how much she had been listening to Mrs. Frederic, and Helena, turning away from the table with her hands full of dishes, had missed the older woman's look, but Myka knew exactly what the look meant. Mrs. Frederic had information, or thought she did, but when Myka glanced back at her, she was eating her cookie, and the only thing her eyes were communicating was a mild admiration for her own baking skills. She left after her offer to help clean up was gently but firmly turned down and Helena had flung an unburned dish towel at Myka.

It took more time to clean the stove than the dishes. The stovetop was coated with oil and soy sauce, and Myka applied a scrubber sponge to it, attacking the spills, some burned onto the metal, with greater vigor whenever she recalled the intensity of Mrs. Frederic's look at her. Did she expect her to sic the FBI after some state assemblyman finishing out his last term before he retired? He might have committed any number of illegalities in ensuring that developers acquired the properties they wanted at the prices they were willing to pay, but unless he committed a murder in association with them, he was beyond the reach of the law. Surely she knew that. Helena tapped her on her shoulder. "You've got it looking better than when I moved in. Why don't you sit down?" Her expression was more serious than her suggestion warranted. She drew in a long breath. "I have something to give you."

"It's not a present, is it?" Myka felt the stir fry, which had been resting lightly, easily on her stomach, engage in a series of flips. She also, just as suddenly, was far more interested in Mrs. Frederic's information. Perhaps she should go downstairs and have a good long talk with her.

"No." Helena was shaking her head. "But it's not what you think." She blew out a long breath. "Well, maybe it is, but it's also more than what you think."

Myka went back to her chair at the kitchen table, counseling herself that, regardless of how dismaying Helena's revelations might be, this time around she was voluntarily admitting . . . this, whatever it was . . . rather than, as she had done eight years ago, letting her flight from the country speak for her. Yet a small voice that sounded annoyingly like Pete was whispering in Myka's ear that Helena had "volunteered" before, offering her services to the FBI. That time she had been in the midst of planning a multi-million dollar art heist. Her desire to be more honest now – maybe she was trying to build trust between them and maybe, just maybe, she was confessing a venial sin to hide a mortal one.

_Pete placed a cup of coffee of her desk. It smelled rich and earthy, and Myka's nose twitched. Most importantly, it smelled of caffeine. As she reached for it, Pete moved the cup away, precious, precious coffee splashing over the side. "Nuh-unh," he said, parking his butt between her arm and the coffee. "I know the late nights you keep. I know they're even later these days because you're making our Mata Hari scream in ecstasy. You're gonna get your coffee, but you have to listen to me."_

" _I can listen and drink at the same time," Myka protested, trying to reach around him for the cup._

_He batted her hand away. "Look, we're brothers-in-arm. Sister and brother arm in arm?" His face knotted in doubt as he tried to work out the analogy. "Anyway, we've got each other's back, okay? I'm not going to rat you out to Bates, but you need to keep your head screwed on about Helena. She gives me the shivers and not in a good way."_

" _You keep saying that we can't trust her, but you can't prove to me why we can't." Myka's head was beginning to throb. Helena had been out of town on a consultation for the better part of the week, and last night . . . . They had had four nights of not being together to make up for. She needed that coffee._

" _You ever wonder if all these trips she takes are really on the up and up? Like maybe she's going to Vegas and gambling our petty cash instead of consulting on The Last Supper or whatever?" He scooted his butt in a half-turn to better face her and Myka had visions coffee flying all over her desk. She was so desperate she might actually lap it up._

" _No. She has an identity, a life, other than being Jim Wells's daughter. She has a solid resumé, Pete, of authenticating art works and restoring them. She doesn't need to do this, working with us. She wants to do it."_

" _Yeah, it's a nice-looking resumé and the references Bates said he called seemed genuine." He rolled his shoulders as if his suit jacket no longer fit him. "But she looks shifty. Hot but shifty. I wouldn't let her look at a priceless painting. I'd be afraid she'd steal it. And as for her working with us 'cause she feels bad that her dad's a deadbeat. Can you think of a better way to pull off a con than to work with the people who're supposed to stop them? What if she's playing us, Mykes?"_

" _She's not."_

" _How do you know?"_

_Because of how she cries out when she comes, as though I'm taking something from her that she doesn't want to give up. She wants the intimacy and she resists it at the same time. The secret that sometimes lurks in her smile? It's gone when we're together like that. There are no secrets between us then. But all she said to Pete was, "I just know."_

_He relented and handed her the coffee. "I checked up on this last trip of hers."_

" _And you found out that she was in Los Angeles just like she said she would be. She was working with the Getty." She took off the lid and grinned evilly at him over the rim. "Want to see the pictures?"_

" _This time, this time, she was telling the truth. But what about next time?"_

Helena placed a device that resembled an old-style pager or travel alarm clock and probably had been one or the other in its former life. Now it was . . . . Myka looked at her expectantly. "It's supposed to continue sending GPS information once the ankle monitor is removed." She pulled a chair closer to Myka and slumped into it. "An unbroken transmission of data designed to fool –"

"Agent Fuck-face," Myka wryly interrupted. She ran her thumb over the device, which needed only to be outfitted with a few knobs and dials to be considered steampunk, like something a smart-alecky character on a cable sci-fi show might invent.

"More, and I quote, that 'dickless wonder in the Fucking Bureau of Idiots' IT department,'" Helena said, the skin at the corner of her eyes crinkling with anxiety or humor or both. "Don't go after Claudia, Myka. I'm giving this to you so you know that I'm not going to leave, not this time. I meant what I said when you thought I had run off with Christina, I won't hurt you like that again."

Yet you asked Claudia to come up with something to neutralize the monitor. Or, if she volunteered, you didn't talk her out of it. Helena could have had the device for weeks or month or mere hours. Although she wasn't smiling, wasn't holding a secret behind the curve of her lips, Helena, Myka concluded, was the puzzle she would never solve, more unknowable now than she had been across the conference table in the prison. Yes, she knew one Helena, maybe several, but there were dozens more she didn't know, including the Helena who had given her the device, not because she wanted her trust but because she had figured out an even better method of escaping the monitor. Confess the venial sin to hide the one that would blow the confessional apart.

"Hey," Helena's fingers, strangely cold in the warmth of the apartment, were tipping Myka's chin, drawing her closer. Helena's eyes, no longer narrowed, were growing larger, as if she were seeing something that alarmed her. "That," she pointed at the device, "that happened not long after I was released into your custody. I was angry and scared, and I wasn't sure if I knew who you were anymore. I haven't tried to use it, ever." She exhaled an uncertain laugh. "A smarter person would've thrown it away, but I need you to see that I can rise above my worst impulses. You make me rise above them."

"Please don't tell me I'm the wind beneath your wings," Myka said dryly, but there was no corresponding smile in her eyes. "I can't come in here one day and see a butter knife, a bar of soap, and the monitor that you've managed to pry off."

"You won't. I'm not that patient," Helena said, bending Myka's head down and kissing the top of it.

You can be. You were with Marston. She pulled away from Helena to pick up the device. "Claudia could be in some serious trouble with this."

"Only if you decide to pursue it." Helena took the device from Myka and slid it to the opposite end of the table. She stood and led Myka into the living room, toward the swaybacked sofa. They fell into a corner of it, and Helena drew Myka onto her lap. "It's my turn to take care of you." She nuzzled Myka's neck and untucked her blouse from her suit pants, spreading her fingers across Myka's abdomen and pressing them into the muscle but not moving them farther down. "You have no idea how many times I dreamed of doing this. It's how I lulled myself to sleep at nights in my cell, reconstructing you like a puzzle, every freckle, every scar. Claudia would go crazy in prison. She can't be still, and though she acts tough, it's an act. A thin shell covering a soft center."

Myka stretched out her legs, relaxing into Helena's lap. "Is that why you pretended you were behind Advantage Financial, because Claudia can't hack prison?"

"I love her, but I wasn't planning to go to prison for her. I thought I would send off on their merry way whoever was stupid enough to want to park their money with Advantage. Claudia and I would have a good laugh about it, and I'd tell her, sternly, never to run another con."

"Only it didn't work out that way."

"It didn't work out that way." Helena's fingers moved to Myka's hair, playing with the strands. "That was the first time I had been arrested, and I honestly believed I would walk away with a fine and community service. But it wasn't the police or state regulators who came to Advantage, it was the FBI, and they remembered Marston." Her fingers stilled. "So did I."

Myka closed her eyes. She was more comfortable than she thought she would be, lying across Helena's lap, and Helena's stroking of her hair was surprisingly soothing. Either her lotus-eating skills had vastly improved, or Helena had had a lot of practice comforting a small child. Probably the latter, there wasn't much sitting on or lying across laps in the Bering house, not with a marginally profitable bookstore to keep open. "Ssshhhhh . . . just relax," Helena said softly. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right where I want to be."

Myka couldn't recall how she had learned of Helena's arrest, whether she had glanced at, then glanced away from, an article in a newspaper or the whispers in the office had grown loud enough for her to stop pretending that she didn't hear them. She had moved in, lived in, the equivalent of a dead zone for years, a testament to the voraciousness of the predator that had once occupied it, and nothing about that predator, what had become of her, whether she was sorry or indifferent about what she had done, could hurt Myka any longer. Only vaguely aware of the arrest and even less aware of the course of the trial, she had been in Colorado Springs when Helena was sentenced, and she had deleted the email from Pete with its string of exclamation marks as soon as she read it. It was lunch time, and she needed to make her father his tuna fish sandwich and answer his repeated questions about what day it was and where "someone" had hidden the remote.

"Did you spare her because Claudia reminds you of you?" No poorly hidden resentment that she hadn't been spared, no derisive inflection suggesting that only narcissism could have motivated Helena because guilt and empathy never had, Myka was, simply, asking. The answer wouldn't surprise her, whatever it was, because thinking the worst for as long as she had tended to exhaust the number of possibilities.

"For a time I thought so. In different ways, we were both raised by wolves. She was raised by Joshua after their parents died, and he has no interest in children. He has no interest in most human beings," Helena said witheringly, "but he resented my interest in her, especially after I broke down over the Marston heist. He was afraid she would end up soft and weak, like me." Helena's fingers left Myka's hair to trace her eyebrows and the line of her nose. "I believe to this day that he was the one who gave the FBI the tip about Advantage. He was going to teach Claudia a lesson."

When Myka no longer felt Helena's touch, she looked up at her, and the darkness of Helena's eyes, which Myka had thought she would never be able to penetrate to its end because, like the universe Myka sometimes fancied Helena's eyes mirrored, Helena was always speeding away from her, suddenly seemed to envelope her. "In the end, I think I wanted to spare her because she reminds me of you." Myka started to lift her head up in surprise or objection, she wasn't sure which, but Helena only laughed affectionately. "Advantage wasn't her idea, it was Todd's, and like him, it wasn't clever or attractive or designed to succeed. But she loves him, far more than he deserves, and dimwit though he is, he knows she's the best thing he'll ever have happen to him. She's his saving grace, as you were mine. I didn't want Advantage to take her down because I didn't want to see her start to hate him and to hate herself for having loved him."

Maybe it had been all of that. Or none of it. Helena had made choices, anticipated outcomes that hadn't happened, just as she had. Although Helena had been sent to a prison far harsher and for a sentence far longer than the crime merited - for most in law enforcement, not harsh enough and not long enough for all the crimes she had committed - Myka hadn't viewed it as justice prevailing. There was no jail time for her, not even the loss of her job for her stupidity, her common-sense-defying trust in Helena Wells. So she had continued to punish herself because there was no Warren Bering in the FBI or at Justice, no one to visit her cube every day and tell her what a disgrace she was. She had stayed when others in her situation would have left to seek redemption elsewhere. Yet the result of the guilt and the anger, the shame and the self-delusion, and the million other half-recognized feelings that neither of them could master was this, their being together, one's head in the other's lap. If some cosmic force were to gather up their lives and throw them like dice, Myka couldn't imagine now that it would turn out any differently; they would still end up here, together, one's head in the other's lap.

When she left, she was still muzzy with sleep and her legs were stiff. They had fallen asleep together on the sofa, and Helena, rather than encouraging her to stay, had pushed her to the door. "Not that we're fooling anybody, if they care to look, but we need to keep up a pretense. I don't want your bosses to use any excuse to separate us."

So Myka had stumbled to the head of the stairs unprotestingly, too tired to sort out whether Helena's cautiousness was justified, self-protective, or suspicious. She hadn't been too tired, however, to forget to take Claudia Donovan's monitor-thwarting device with her. It weighed down the pocket of her blazer and thumped against the wooden railing of the stairs. She was unsurprised to see Mrs. Frederic at the foot of them. She was still dressed in her slacks and silk blouse, though Myka wasn't sure but what there weren't slippers on her feet. "I was hoping to catch you before you left," Mrs. Frederic said.

Myka thought back to their conversation at dinner. "You know whatever laws were broken back then are going to remain broken. There's nothing we can do about dirty politicians who booted people out of their homes or bent rules for real estate developers 30 years ago. Not unless you have proof that they're still doing it." She repressed the desire to fluff her hair and straighten her jacket. What was it about this woman that made her feel like she was 17 years old? Never mind the fact that the 17-year-old Myka Bering hadn't had a single date, let alone entertained anyone in the bedroom she shared with Tracy.

"Oh, I know that," Mrs. Frederic said. "But, thankfully, there are other courts and other ways to be found guilty." She stepped closer to Myka, who, despite being a couple of inches taller, always felt the shorter in Mrs. Frederic's presence. "How well versed are you in Winslow family history, Agent Bering? Do you know that 30 years ago Mark Winslow, Christina's grandfather, was on the city's council, poised to run for Congress? You can never have too much money or too many friends, not if you want to win. What he couldn't do for his 'friends' on the council, he did behind the scenes, working with borough presidents and their boards. If a developer wanted a property that was currently a halfway house, Mark Winslow was the one who brandished a handful of citations that got it shut down and the property put on the market. If a developer wanted to build a multi-family unit on top of an area known to hold hazardous waste, Mark Winslow was the one who obtained an official report that declared the property met all environmental regulations then muscled the proposal through."

"And you know all this because?"

"Because I was at the public meetings and hearings, I was the one who scrambled to find the residents of the halfway home a new place to live and smelled the fumes in that brand-new apartment building. I was there, Agent Bering, I saw, I witnessed." Mrs. Frederic's face looked as imperturbable as ever in the dim light, but her voice had risen. Slightly.

"It's still not proof," Myka said gently.

"I guess I was lucky to be married to an attorney then because I have boxes of Lawrence's old files. A lot of the cases he took never went to trial, but what he found, what people said in depositions, it's all still there." Her eyes looked past Myka, up the stairs. "You're going to tell me that you don't have the time to look through my husband's papers, but I know someone who does. Someone who knows how that information can be most effectively . . . disseminated." She tapped the pocket holding Claudia's device. "Helena didn't need to tell me how Ben Winslow behaved at the hospital, I knew his father." Mrs. Frederic tapped the device harder. "She has a good heart, and she'll work with you, Agent Bering, if you approach her the right way."

Myka wryly reflected that Mrs. Frederic could be equally referring to Helena or Claudia. "How do you know her?"

"Claudia helps out at one of the charities I'm still involved with. She works with troubled youth." As Myka's eyebrows spiked, Mrs. Frederic chuckled. "You should know better than anyone that people are rarely what they seem. There's always some side to them, some aspect that you can't see."

Yes, and that was the problem. 


	19. Chapter 19

She was in the office especially early this morning, 5:58 by her watch. Those months with Sam, when they had been in that strange territory where they were more than exes but not yet friends (again) and sex had only underscored the distance between them, she would doze, at best, next to him. What she had really wanted to do was to leave, if they were at his place, or ask him to leave, if they were at hers, but she had shrunk from treating him as if he were someone she had picked up when she was too lonely to go home alone. Not because it would hurt him but because it would hurt her, further confirm her fears that she was incapable of getting past Helena's betrayal. So she had started thinking of leaving the agency, leaving New York, leaving him, and then had come the meeting with Pete, when she had learned what, who her next assignment would be. And everything had changed. She still slept like crap – when Helena wasn't in the bed with her – but coming to the office with her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, the 20 oz. cup of coffee in her hand trembling, she might look the same as she did when she had come into the office to escape the morning dance with Sam, but she didn't feel the same. She felt . . . better. It was the only qualifier she would allow herself, for now, but she was optimistic about an upgrade.

Myka had the files of Jim Wells and Charlie Wells open on her desk; she had been looking at them continuously, obsessively. She didn't think either would tell her anything new about Helena, but one or both might tell her more about Burdette. Although there was no solid evidence to tie him to their deaths, the FBI and Helena were unshakably convinced that he had been behind them. They had been well designed and well executed, Gentleman Jim ostensibly dying of a heart attack, unremarkable given his age and the life he had led, and Charlie dying at the hands of his fellow prisoners, similarly unremarkable given his circumstances. Helena believed that Burdette had had them killed because he had always resented the Wellses; his pleasure at having his former boss and his boss's son working for him, being at his beck and call, not as sweet, in the end, as the revenge for years of humiliation.

She had thought that, too, her response colored by her own years of humiliation, perhaps. She had never elaborately staged Helena's death in her mind, but she had had countless fantasies of throttling her. There was nothing like a new perspective, however, to make you see everything differently. Looking at the photos, Myka didn't sense anger; she saw efficiency and, in the case of Charlie's death, a little chest-thumping, which wasn't directed at the remaining Wells but law enforcement. See what I did? Come get me, I dare you. Helena would resist the conclusion, but Myka was beginning to believe that Burdette hadn't had the Wells men executed because they frustrated him or betrayed him. He had had them killed because they were no longer of any use to him, and rather than letting them become of use to someone else, whether the FBI or a rival, he had ensured that they would never be of use to anyone ever again.

The only reason Helena was still alive was that her association with Burdette had ended so many years ago that both her usefulness and the risk she posed to him were limited. Until now. The agency and the DOJ had tipped the scale the wrong way. If she were Burdette, all she would see when she looked at Helena was risk, risk that Helena was working a con, possibly with the assistance of law enforcement. Yes, the Bowdoin haul might still be worth millions, maybe even hundreds of millions given how art prices had skyrocketed over the past 25 years, but what shape were the works in and how complete had the haul remained? Just because there had been few whispers over the years about the works and their whereabouts didn't mean that Gentleman Jim and his co-conspirators hadn't managed to find buyers for them.

Furthermore, Myka continued arguing with herself, if Nate had want the artworks that badly wouldn't he have tortured their location out of Jim Wells before he had had him killed? She paged back to a photo of Jim holding court at a table outside a café, the remains of a meal pushed aside, the men frozen in the moment of sipping from their wine glasses or lighting cigarettes. The photograph had good definition, considering that it had been taken at a distance. The resemblance between Helena and her father was strongly marked despite the toll of Jim Wells's various indulgences. The fleshiness of his face, the lacework of blood vessels just beneath the surface of his skin couldn't disguise the origin of her cheekbones, her nose, the tilted cantilevering of her eyes. Take away the resemblance, take away Helena, and Jim Wells looked little different from a moderately successful crook; there was nothing about him that suggested he would withstand the kind of interrogation that Burdette could devise. He had served time, but that hardship had been decades of lavish dinners and expensive hotel suites ago.

So, if Nate could have gotten the information out of Helena's father one way or another but hadn't, why was he pretending an interest in the Bowdoin artworks now? Myka knew what Helena's answer would be, it was the explanation she had given when she suggested enticing Burdette with the Martin Phillips she planned to "enhance" – he was obsessed with the Wells family. Sighing, Myka closed the files. What was it that Helena said marked the ruin of a good con artist? When he began to believe in his own fantasies. Admittedly, she couldn't peer into Burdette's mind, but Myka suspected that the only one who remained obsessed with a Wells, besides another Wells, was a certain lovelorn FBI agent.

She needed another coffee and something to eat. Her apartment was looking more and more like a suite in an extended-stay motel, smelling of cleaning fluids but not actually clean and offering an array of aging condiments but no real food. She was spending most of her evenings at Helena's place; she wasn't sleeping over, but she was showing up after she had left the office for the day, which might be 7:30 or 9:00. Helena had started waiting dinner for her so they could eat together, and Myka realized that they had slipped into their old routine from when they had lived together. Except, of course, that they weren't living together, the old Myka wouldn't have been able to conceive of, let alone accept, the possibility that the meals and kisses and their mutual worrying about the threats posed by Burdette, on the one hand, and the Winslows, on the other, was all part of a con that Helena was running. The new Myka could live in both worlds, the one she hoped was true and the one she feared was the reality, but only for a time.

Despite Helena's increasing anxiety about Burdette, they were both in agreement that the more immediate threat was the Winslows. Christina's collarbone was healing nicely, but Jemma's face seized with guilt and remorse every time she looked at her. Ben's rage-fueled claims that he would have Christina removed from Jemma's care weren't idle ones. He and his father could bring considerable pressure to bear on a judge. They wouldn't be so crude as to try to blackmail or bribe one; they wouldn't need to. The Winslows had the money to buy a legal team who could outsmart, outmaneuver, and outperform Jemma's counsel. It was no criticism of her attorney. Myka had seen it often enough in her own work. Even airtight cases could develop gaping holes when a top-tier law firm was hired by the defense. Jemma would need more ammunition against the Winslows than the hard work and dedication her attorney would promise her. Mrs. Frederic said she had evidence of the senator's past influence-peddling, but Myka wasn't sure how damaging 40-year old tales of corruption and bribery would prove to be. They could just end up being another quaint hallmark of the '70s, like leisure suits or streaking. She uneasily rolled her shoulders under her blazer as she left the cube farm for the main doors. She couldn't say which put her on edge more, having Mrs. Frederic whisper her tales of ancient wrongdoing from the shadows or the prospect of asking for Claudia Donovan's help.

Passing through security, she saw Leena wildly waving at her. "Wait up, I'm going wherever you're going."

Reluctantly Myka stopped and stepped aside to let incoming staff enter the office. So close to the outside, to coffee, yogurt, precious minutes to clear her mind, but with Leena flagging her down just as she was about to escape, not close enough. If this had been the weekend and they had been outside the office, she would have gladly waited, but here, inside the office, she couldn't assume that Leena was interested in a friendly chat. This Leena was the psychologist trying to assess how well she was handling the stress of her assignment or, worse, the director-whisperer sent to gauge how close she was to fucking it all up and putting Burdette beyond the agency's reach. So Myka didn't hesitate to grumble at her as they badged themselves out, "Did your bosses ask you to evaluate me or threaten me?"

Leena wasn't offended, although her smile faded. "I shouldn't have to remind you that they're your bosses, too. Maybe I want to talk to you because I've missed you." Myka noticed that she didn't say her desire to talk to her wasn't also work-related, and, after a pause, Leena added, "I can wear multiple hats. I have a professional  _and_  a personal interest in how things are going with you and Helena." As they waited for the elevator, she suggested quietly, "Let's have our coffee outside."

It may or may not have been the same bench they had sat on when, months ago, Leena had encouraged her to give Helena the benefit of the doubt, but Leena had the same gently inquiring expression. She was even sharing her lemon poppy seed muffin with her, just as she had the pita chips and hummus. And just as she had then, Myka was eating it, having discovered that the hard-boiled egg she bought with her coffee wasn't going to be enough. Or maybe she was eating it because it gave her an excuse not to look into the face of her friend, whose first loyalty, she reminded herself, would be to the agency. Awkwardly capturing some muffin crumbs that had escaped her lips, she searched for a napkin until Leena pressed one into her hand. "Why are we out here, Leena? Being 30 feet from the doors doesn't mean that you won't repeat anything I tell you that you think is a concern."

"Less likely to be interrupted or overheard, that's why. Myka, I don't  _want_  to have to tell Pete or his boss anything." She sipped her coffee. "So, if he has to hear something, I want him to hear it from me, when I can provide context – and not from someone who was standing outside my office waiting to talk to me."

"Context?" Myka echoed. She crumpled the napkin into a ball. "It sounds like you've already made up your mind that there's something to report."

"Ugh, this is not how I want it to go." Leena looked away, squinting at the sun. She set her tea down and pulled her blazer tighter. "You can already feel fall in the air." Her voice grew even quieter. "There's always been this fundamental discomfort between the two of you. It was as if your history trailed you wherever you went. But recently? I have to admit, it's a pretty good road show version, but the tension is different." Her laugh, also quiet, carried an appreciative note. "It's not you, it's her. I think tension and discomfort are your base, Myka, but Helena, I can tell she's happy."

Myka wished she had gotten a larger coffee. More accurately she wished the coffee shop sold a larger coffee. "I thought you told me, way back when, that I should entertain the possibility that she wanted to make amends. That's what I'm doing." Did she sound disingenuous or did she sound oblivious? She doubted that she sounded sincere.

"There's the happiness of being forgiven and then there's the other kind." Leena held up her hand to forestall a response. "I don't want more explanation because then I probably would be honor-bound to tattle on you. Letting her make amends doesn't mean letting her back into your bed, or heart."

"Why do I need that little voice inside my head when I have you?" Myka asked sardonically. "Isn't this when you remind that though she may be sorry for what she's done, she's, at bottom, a con artist?"

She had meant it rhetorically; she didn't need Leena's concurrence. It was the thought she carried with her when she left Helena's apartment, and it was the thought that hung over her when she lay sleepless in her bed. It wasn't if Helena would revert back to her old ways – and that was giving her the benefit of the doubt by assuming she hadn't always approached her arrangement with the FBI and Justice as something to be subverted - it was when and why. Leena, however, appeared to be pondering the question as if it really deserved an answer. "I could take a lot of terms out of the DSM, but Helena doesn't readily fit into any category. Maybe the truest thing to say about her is that she grew up believing the only person she could trust was herself. When we're under stress we tend to rely on old patterns of behavior, even when we know they're not healthy. If she feels threatened, she'll take matters into her own hands, regardless of whether it's the best course of action."

It was a kinder assessment than Myka had expected. "What are my old patterns? You know the saying, forewarned is forearmed. Obviously the old Myka is no match for the old Helena, so maybe I should tell Pete to make sure he has reinforcements." She had tried to make a wry joke of it, but what she heard was bitterness.

"You always want to make a situation work. It's what makes you a good agent, Myka. You seek solutions." Leena had turned her head to meet Myka's eyes. "You're smart and you're persistent. You have the tools to outwit her. You just need to be on your guard."

"Lucky for me, it's another old pattern."

_She had wanted to tell them in person. Not only tell but explain, she had wanted to explain to them in person because telling them over the phone that she and Sam were getting a divorce would have resulted in a confused and ultimately resistant silence. The resistance wouldn't be coming from her father. Although he wouldn't be diagnosed as having Alzheimer's for another few months, he no longer listened to his wife's end of their phone calls with their daughter and grumbled his objections loudly enough to ensure that Myka could hear them. His would be the confused silence, not the silence implacably opposed to the end of the "good thing" that her marriage to Sam had represented. Her mother had called it that during a visit she and Sam had made to Colorado Springs during the first year of their marriage. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still not happy the two of you eloped, but it's a good thing you have with him, Myka." "Good thing" had been almost fervently underscored, as though people or maybe just the Berings in particular got only one good thing in life, and this marriage to Sam was hers. It said more about her mother and the mystery of her parents' marriage than Myka was comfortable thinking about. Was it worse to believe that her father was her mother's one good thing or the penance Jeannie had had to pay for not recognizing her good thing when she had it?_

_Her father had shuffled away from the front door, without a hello or a complaint or even a grunt as she had entered the tiny foyer with her overnight bag. Her mother had pressed her to eat, shaking her head when Myka said she had eaten a sandwich on the plane. Out had come the coffee maker, the generic brand chocolate chip cookies, and Myka had sat at the table in the dining nook, trying to ignore both as she repeated that the divorce was no one's fault and that Sam would make another woman a wonderful husband. It was no one's fault, she had said again the next day when she and her parents met Tracy and their grandson at a nearby park._

" _You have the best of intentions, but sometimes it doesn't work out." Myka picked up her nephew at the end of the slide. He squirmed from her arms and ran to the steps leading to the top of the slide, pulling himself up by the handrail since the steps were too far apart for his legs to easily negotiate them. His were not the long, coltish Bering legs that both she and Tracy had inherited from their father._

" _Sometimes you give it more than a couple of years before throwing your hands up and saying 'We had the best of intentions,'" Tracy sniped._

_Her father might be disengaged, shambling along a paved walkway, but there was no shortage of Bering spleen and venom. Tracy was carrying the family's standard for this visit. Myka ignored her and waved at her nephew, who was third in line to go down the slide. She knew she hadn't given her marriage her all, but then she had no "all" to give. It wasn't self-pity if it was true, was it? Myka felt her mother's arm around her waist, and Jeannie gave her a quick, reassuring squeeze. After he had tired of the slide, they had taken Noah to the swings, but he grew bored with the gentle pushes of his aunt and grandmother and demanded that they go to the pond and feed the ducks. Tracy shepherded their father back into the fold, and Myka heard her say under her breath to their mother, "He said he was trying to get back to the car, but he couldn't remember where it was parked." The pond was within a relatively short distance of the playground, not so far that kids would complain of the distance but far enough that the younger ones especially were convinced that they had circled around to the other side of the park. More than one sign informed visitors not to feed the ducks, but Tracy opened her handbag and took out a plastic baggie of dried corn. Her jaw stubbornly set, she sent Myka a dark look and urged Noah to the water's edge. "At least it's corn and not bread. What are you going to do, arrest me?"_

_Tracy had offered her verdict and that night, after an excruciatingly quiet dinner at home, her father pronounced his judgment. Putting his cup of coffee on an end table next to a battered leather easy chair that had seen service in the bookstore, he said, "I knew it was never going to work out." Grunting as he lowered himself onto the cushion, he added, "You've never made good choices, Myka. First it was that kid at college, could never look me in the eye. Then it was that girl at law school you brought home one Thanksgiving, after you decided you were bisexual." He had hooked his fingers in air quotes. "She was always trying to show me how smart she was. And then you picked the whopper, the one who emptied out a museum right under your nose. She almost cost you your job. She probably should have. The FBI practically had us in prison as her co-conspirators." The gaze he turned on her wasn't confused or distracted, it was bright and hard and unrelenting. "Tell me, what kind of guy is going to want to marry a woman who allowed millions of dollars of art to disappear? Not one who's worth a damn."_

_Jeannie vaguely shushed him as she sat down on the sofa across from him. Myka shrugged and wearily said, "Thanks for your opinion, Dad." If she had been going to kill him, she would have done it years ago. She sat in the opposite corner of the sofa and picked up the brick of a thriller she had purchased at the airport. Like her, the federal agent who was its hero was involved in a potentially career-ending affair with a woman possessed of a shady past, but unlike her, the federal agent would emerge both triumphant and unscathed. Or so Myka presumed, she still had 550 pages to go._

_Later, when she was packing for the flight back to New York the next day, she left the paperback out of her bag. There really was no need to read to the end. Her parents had already gone to bed, which was why she jumped a little when she heard a quiet knock at her door. Her mother, wearing a light robe over the prim, floral nightgowns she had favored since Myka was a child, took in the open bag on the bed._

" _Your flight isn't until ten. Are you planning to leave at the crack of dawn?"_

" _It was always going to be an in-and-out kind of visit, Mom. If I can get in earlier . . . ."_

" _I wish your dad and your sister could have found it within themselves to say that they were sad or sorry." Jeannie scuffed across the carpet to give Myka a hug. "So I'll say it for them, we're sorry to hear the news, and if there's anything we can to do to help you through it . . . ."_

" _Thanks." Myka sat on the corner of the bed and Jeannie joined her. "Sam's a good guy. He's not to blame –"_

" _Has she come back?" Her mother was looking anxiously at her._

_Myka stared at her in surprise. "What?"_

" _Has Helena come back? Because you're not a quitter, Myka, and I could tell you were happy with Sam. I can't think of what else might have happened." Her mother's hand had clamped onto her wrist. "She's not worth going to prison for. Don't fall for whatever she's telling you."_

" _Mom, she hasn't come back. I don't know where she is, and, believe me, if she ever did come back, I'd turn her in. It didn't work with Sam because –"_

" _Because you're not over her." The pressure on Myka's wrist became more painful. She had had no idea her mother was that strong. Her mother smiled sadly at her. "You're like him, you know. The two of you, you've always wanted to . . . surrender . . . to something all-consuming. Your father came out here to be a great skier. When that didn't work, he wanted to become a great writer. He wanted so much to be a part of something larger, and when he couldn't find something to match his dreams, he turned on himself." She sighed. "And anyone near him."_

_It was perilously close to an explanation that he had tried to crush her soul because he loved her. If she had ever been going to ask her mother why she had continued to stay with him, Myka would have done that years ago, too. Instead she leaned over and kissed her mother's temple. "What I can't forget is how special she made me feel, Mom. It may have all been a lie, but I've never felt that I mattered so much to anyone, that I was . . . unforgettable." Myka couldn't pronounce the word without blushing with shame. As it had turned out, she was all too forgettable._

" _Love," Jeannie Bering said bleakly, "is the greatest con of them all."_

Christina had already been in three time-outs, her bad temper succeeded by tears and then by more sulks. It had been raining all day, a cool, steady rain reminiscent of fall, and Myka remembered how Leena had pulled her blazer tighter when they had talked in the courtyard earlier in the week. Coloring books and markers were strewn across the living room floor, and a stack of Disney DVDs was on the cabinet next to the TV. Her tear-stained face was turned up to her mother's; a tantrum had ensued when Helena said she couldn't watch  _Frozen_  until she helped pick up the books and markers. Détente wasn't likely, given the scowl on Helena's face.

"Let's go out and jump in puddles," Myka said, leaping up from her chair, headed for the coat closet in the foyer.

Christina spun around, eyes wide with excitement. "We can go outside?"

"Rain melts only the Wicked Witch of the West." The allusion was lost on Christina, who apparently hadn't been introduced to Oz and Dorothy and the Yellow Brick Road. Yet the puzzlement disappeared with a brush of her hand across her face, as if the tears and the unhappiness that had caused them were never to be recalled again.

"I don't think jumping's good for her collarbone," Helena objected.

"It's just an excuse to get out of the house. Don't be so literal-minded," Myka chided her as she placed Christina's rainboots on the large yarn rug that virtually covered the width of the foyer.

"I've been dealing with a cranky four-year-old all afternoon. Both my appreciation of irony and my patience are gone." Helena had joined them, helping Christina wriggle her feet into the pink plastic boots. "Can't go out in the rain without your wellies," she said, tapping Christina on the nose. Myka was skeptically examining a rain poncho she had found, holding it up and glancing from it to Christina and back again. "It'll fit," Helena said with a softly derisive snort and carefully slipped it over her daughter's head. She then searched the closet shelf until she found an umbrella, which she handed to Myka.

"You're not going with us?" Myka asked. What had seemed a simple solution suddenly blossomed into an engineering problem. She had a child who was ready to fly out the door in pink . . . moonboots . . . and she would be all that was between that child reinjuring her collarbone or running into the street in front of a car or returning home a sodden mess, or all three. And she was supposed to manage an umbrella on top of it.

"Oh, no," Helena said, smiling. "Jemma got to escape to the movies this afternoon. I'm going to make myself a cup of tea and enjoy the silence for as long as it lasts."

On cue, it started raining harder once they left the protection of the porch for the sidewalk, and Myka felt the raindrops pelting her clothes as she struggled to open the umbrella. Christina obediently stood next to her, the shapeless rain poncho making her look like a cartoon ghost, a bulb-shaped head appended to a mini tablecloth. She held the umbrella over their heads as they started at a sedate pace down the sidewalk. Christina tentatively kicked through a few puddles and soon grew confident enough to run through a larger one that covered the sidewalk ahead of them. Her running in the boots was awkward enough that Myka had visions of her feet tangling and the fall landing Christina squarely on her collarbone, but her giggles and shrieks of pleasure stilled the "Be careful!" and "Slow down!" that Myka was tempted to shout. The girl had been cooped up all day, the past two weeks, really. She deserved the freedom to run around a little, even if it was risky, and her running wasn't that awful, was it? But when Christina hitched to her left, her right boot dragging, Myka sped up to keep even with her. There was giving her freedom and then there was being negligent.

"Maybe we ought to slow down a little? We don't want to arrive at the princess's house too soon."

"We're going to a princess's house?" Christina looked up at her expectantly.

Myka could almost hear Helena snickering. "Um . . . it's kind of like the bald princess's house, her castle. You can see it in your imagination, but you can't see it out here." She gestured at the homes on either side of the street, larger, set farther back, and with a market value considerably higher than Helena's and Jemma's.

"If it's in 'magin'tion, how will we know we're there?"

Maybe  _The Wizard of Oz_  wasn't such a useless reference after all. Playing Glinda to Christina's Dorothy, Myka said, "We'll be there when we close our eyes." She stopped and closed her eyes. "Do you see it?" She looked down through the screen of her eyelashes at Christina. Christina faithfully nodded. "What does it look like?"

"Big and pink and it has sparkles." Like a flower, Christina's face turned unerringly up at her again, her eyes squeezed shut. Then she opened her eyes and sighed when the same homes as before swam back into view.

Myka flushed. Glinda actually sent Dorothy home. What she had done wasn't magic but a chintzy trick instead – 'It's there in your imagination, kid.' Her father, in a kinder mood, would have said something like that. Want a princess house? Close your eyes. Myka opened her mouth but shut it a second later for fear she would promise Christina something else she couldn't deliver. Christina didn't hold the absence of a big, pink castle with sparkles against her, stamping her feet in the next puddle they came upon and pointing at the water as it lapped over her boots. Shifting uncomfortably in her increasingly wet shirt – the umbrella provided only partial protection – Myka called softly to her, "Let's turn around and go home. We don't want Mommy to worry."

Christina didn't protest, walking close to Myka. Bumping against Myka's hip, she said, "Do you know what Nonni said? She said I should be in the market for a new daddy. Can you really get daddies at the store?"

If only. Feeling she was on surer ground now that she wasn't promising Christina castles and princesses, Myka said, "You can get lots of things at a store but not –"

"Will you be my new daddy? I don't like the one I have."

Myka stopped, letting the umbrella swing to the ground. Christina had asked it speculatively, as if she were trying it out like she might a sales pitch for Girl Scout cookies before she started ringing doorbells. Door to door to door she would go, inquiring of the adult who opened the door whether he or she would be her "new daddy." Sure it was a ridiculous scenario, but Christina, even at four, had the impulse to change a situation she didn't like. It was better than enduring it and promising yourself that when you graduated from high school, you'd pack your bags for college and never look back. She knelt, letting the rain wet her hair. "I would love to be your new daddy, but I think the one you have won't want to be traded in. Maybe you and I, we can make him a better daddy." Doubtful, but anything was possible. Look at her and Helena. Maybe her belief that life was something other, better than the stark binary of predator and prey wasn't so foolish. If there were more than snakes and mice in the world, there were more than the mommies and daddies you were born with. "No matter what, I will always be your Myka."

Christina wasn't old enough yet to ask her what that meant, which was a very good thing, since Myka didn't know either. If Helena wasn't conning her and if Burdette didn't kill them both, she might have a chance to find out. Christina seemed satisfied, turning the conversation to dinner and asking her if they could have hot dogs. "How about on princess placemats we make ourselves? And with sparkly tater tots?" Myka couldn't conjure castles out of thin air but she could shake some candy sprinkles over tater tots. Sprinkles weren't that much worse than ketchup. They couldn't be.

"Yesyesyesyes!" Christina shouted. Myka had barely straightened and lifted the useless umbrella before Christina was tugging at her hand and ordering her to hurry up.

It was reckless to be violating the visitation agreement yet again. The Winslows could use it against Helena if their attorneys were to depose her or Jemma, but Helena didn't object as they stayed past five and then six, boiling hot dogs and baking tater tots. Jemma was content to let them make a mess of her kitchen while she and Christina drew flowers and princesses and castles on several sheets of paper. Helena crossed her arms over her stomach in mock or, possibly, real disgust as Myka shook sprinkles over the tots, murmuring, "You'll have to eat them, too, you know."

She was silent as Myka drove her back to Mrs. Frederic's, although Myka felt Helena's gaze on her for the entire ride. The quality of the silence was different; it wasn't angry or resentful. It wasn't despairing or calculating. It seemed thoughtful, musing. Myka felt as she sometimes did under the eyes of a sales associate in a department store, pictured in a variety of outfits, all of which were more flattering and expensive than the clothes she was wearing. Before she got out of the car, Helena leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "You are not your parents, Myka. If we come out on the other side of this in one piece, we're having more children."

Entering her own apartment, Myka closed her eyes and in her 'magn'tion saw a home that had easy chairs so deep you had to be pulled out of them, fireplaces, a master bedroom with a bed big enough that their kids could jump up and down on it and still not wake her and Helena. Opening her eyes, she immediately closed them against the drabness. Of course that  _had_  been its appeal, initially. After her divorce, she hadn't wanted anything that looked like a home; she had wanted a hotel room, only slightly bigger. She missed the mess of coloring books and markers, stuffed animals, and dolls, she wanted to lay next to Helena in the quiet and spaciousness of her bedroom, she wanted to make love to her all night and then wake up to the sounds of Christina playing or demanding breakfast of her nonni in the morning. She wanted many things now when she had spent many years not wanting or hardly wanting anything at all; she was unaccustomed to how driving desire could be. In April, she had had no dissatisfaction with the apartment; at the end of August, she could hardly stand to be in it.

She turned her small TV on only to turn it off. Reading a book wasn't what she wanted either. She had a half-bottle of wine in the fridge, but she wasn't sure how easily it would ride on top of sparkly tater tots. Besides, drinking a glass of wine solely to pass the time until she could talk herself into going to bed, it completed the picture of dreariness that the apartment had begun to symbolize for her.

Choosing a bottle of water instead, she uncapped it only to hear the buzzing of her phone. It could be Helena, or it could be . . . Pete. She would have preferred Helena, but any interruption of the sterile silence was welcome. Unless he was about to tell her that the case against DeWitt had gone south. "What's going on Pete?"

"I got a call from DeWitt's attorney, Mykes. He wants to talk." After a pause, Pete said, "He wants to talk to you. His attorney made that very clear."

"Do you have any idea what he wants to talk about?"

"Nope, but I suggest you make meeting with him your first priority. He probably just wants to scam us, but if it could help us . . . ."

"Should I take Helena along?"

"No, he wants to talk to you and only you. Stop in with an update once you've seen him." Just as the call ended, she could hear Pete yelling "Travis, put my controller down and go to bed."

She had wanted something to occupy her thoughts. Opening her closet, she surveyed her suits. While they all tended to be in dark colors and conservatively cut, some were more actuarial than others. A navy pantsuit with a lighter blue button-down shirt, he would expect her to wear something like this, to underscore that she was a law enforcement agent. Did she want to conform to his expectations or try to unsettle them? Myka closed the doors. She could spend all night trying to outguess him. He would be trying to work her, to find the weak points he had missed the first time, when she had been Helena's neglected wife. He would be looking to play on her vulnerabilities to find out what the FBI had on him. The more he could make her question herself, the less attention she would be paying to him and what he was trying to do. He would be seeking to distract her, as Helena had eight years before. She wondered if he had managed to discover that fact; it would explain why he was insisting on talking to her and only to her. She had been conned once before. That was one explanation, although if he had discovered who Helena was, maybe he was hoping that their investigation of him was tainted by the fact that she was a felon. But he wouldn't need to see her to work that angle . . . . Myka flopped on her bed. She could count on having another sleepless night.

She made sure she was late. She had called ahead to arrange the meeting with DeWitt, but she had also said that regardless of how late "traffic" might make her, he was to be kept in the interview room. If there were complaints about disruptions to schedules or the need to ensure there was additional monitoring, they could be forwarded to her bosses. DeWitt wouldn't be surprised by the ploy; he was well versed in displays of dominance, but he might be irked by it all the same. Some part of him, buried deep underneath the overweening self-confidence and unrelieved narcissism, would find his imprisonment galling. While she didn't want to waste time or betray herself or the agency to him by trying to outfox him, running 20 minutes late wasn't late at all when you trying to get anywhere in the city in the early morning.

DeWitt was a study in nonchalance when the guard opened the door to the interview room for her. His eyes were closed, his hands resting on his thighs, but he was smiling. His eyelids fluttered and rose slowly, his smile becoming broader and self-satisfied. "This is a good place to think, to close your eyes and let your thoughts order themselves. The cell I'm in is crowded and noisy, but here," he gestured at the walls, "I literally have room to think, and it's peaceful. So I have to thank you for making me wait. I've put the time to good use."

"Are you finding jail stressful, Bryce? Did you ask for me to take your confession?" There was one chair opposite him. She couldn't pull it out; it was bolted to the floor, as were the table and the chair he was sitting on.

"Not at all. I'll be out of here before too long. You have to know how weak your case against me is, built on the so-called confessions of people who I thought were my friends. But people as rich and powerful as they are don't make friends with the likes of you and me, Myka." His gaze, which had been drifting from her to the door to the walls before lighting lazily back on her, as if she weren't important enough to hold his attention, suddenly sharpened. "I always sensed a connection between us. You know what it's like to feel that you've spent most of your life on the outside looking in."

"And here I thought you just wanted to fuck me."

His laugh was so short and surprised that it sounded more like a bark. She had chosen to wear her hair up today, like the day she and Helena had met him at Barrington. All that was missing was the twin set. She had banked on the fact that hearing "fuck" come out of her mouth would be like hearing his first grade teacher say it. It was another cheap trick to keep him off balance, but she wasn't above resorting to them. "You were a challenge, and I can't resist a challenge. On the other hand, your 'wife,'" he said with ironic emphasis, "would spread her legs for anyone if it got her closer to what she wanted. Helena Wells, what didn't she do to pull off the Marston Gallery heist? But you would know that better than anyone, wouldn't you?"

Myka tried desperately not to stiffen. DeWitt researched his marks and made educated guesses about what he didn't know. Helena's name and the Gallery heist had been linked before, and while it wasn't public knowledge that Helena had previously worked for the FBI, jails were notorious rumor mills. A number of the guards knew her by name and more than a few could remember her from the years when she wore Marston in the grim set of her face like a scarlet A, when she would arrange time for an interview or interrogation and never lift her eyes from the floor as she passed them, dreading the contempt in their glances. The guards, like the inmates, suffered from boredom, and though they were generally cautious about what they revealed concerning the agents and the U.S. attorneys they led to and from the private rooms, DeWitt was clever enough to elicit more information from them than they knew they were providing. Moreover, if he had a halfway competent attorney, the attorney would be diligently unearthing everything he could about consultant Helena Wells and Agent Myka Bering, searching for any error, any crossing of a line in their interactions with him and the other Barrington alums. As for her and Helena's past relationship, the fact that their jury-rigged marriage, with its tension and disagreement, had been believable at all was because it had traded on those old emotions. She hadn't been acting the unhappy spouse, she  _had_  been unhappy. DeWitt wasn't clairvoyant, he was a con.

"If what women do is 'spread their legs,' it's no surprise that you don't have any friends."

"We all spread our legs for someone, Myka. It's who you spread them for that's important. If you don't choose wisely among the people who are inevitably going to fuck you over –"

"We end up like you?" Myka cut in abruptly. "You're the one wearing a jumpsuit and sitting in a cell, Bryce. Where's Chris? Where's Alex?"

DeWitt's face didn't tighten; rather it seemed to undergo a subtle rearrangement, as if the bones were shifting under internal pressure. It wasn't idle speculation to wonder how close he had come to launching himself across the table at her. "I know I'll be vindicated." He looked away from her, and when his eyes met hers again, they had a roguish cast. "But I'm not averse to hurrying my vindication along. I have some information to share with you."

"For a price, I presume."

"I'm open to negotiating." Seeing the skeptical curl of her mouth, he said chidingly, "She's never going to deliver what she's promised. She'll string you along until she's ready to disappear and poof," he closed his hands into fists and then opened them, spreading his fingers wide, "she's gone. She'll have an escape hatch that you won't find until she vanishes through it."

Unwillingly, Myka remembered the homemade signal-jamming device, designed to neutralize the ankle monitor, that Helena had dropped into her hands. Helena claimed that she never would have used it, but Helena claimed many things. She had left their loft days before the Marston heist, vowing to be back soon. Yes, poof. After Marston, when they had tried to trace Helena's movements, they had gotten no farther than Chicago. She had purchased a one-way ticket under the name of Helena Wells, and after that she had vanished into cyberspace. The identities she had assumed, how she had gotten to Houston, and, more important, how she had gotten out of the country, they were never able to completely put together. Myka suspected that Joshua Donovan had done his best – and his best was very, very good – to erase any electronic traces, and what he hadn't been able to erase, he had tried to corrupt or bury under a mountain of garbage data. Helena maintained that she had been too broken by her own deception to complete the theft, but she hadn't been so broken that she wasn't able to elude the FBI.

Of course, Helena had an escape hatch. She would always retain the instincts of a con. Myka could only hope that she would rise above them. "What do you have to sell, Bryce?" She didn't hide the weariness.

"I know where the Bowdoin art works are hidden." 


End file.
